A Rather Wonderous Journey Through Wilde Worlds
by EvilStevilTheKenevil
Summary: Nicholas Wilde, framed for murder and sentenced to death, has but minutes to live. That is, until the right man shows up in the wrong place, and makes all the difference in the worlds.
1. A Case Study in Zystopian Justice

Hello dear reader and/or Zootopia Trash: Thanks for checking out my story.

First, what exactly _is_ this story?

There are many fanfictions out there that exploit a single AU, or even a few universes, like _A Different Path_ , in which Zootopian Nick and Judy find themselves in the Zystopian universe. It, and a few other _Zootopia_ fanfictions use the multiverse to form a premise, or maybe as a one time plot device. But what if the multiverse itself _is_ the premise, rather than interpersonal drama, good vs evil, or a romantic honeymoon in Hell? What if each chapter took place in a different world, itself merely one of many millions?

OK, it won't be quite _that_ crazy, but nevertheless, the multiverse is itself the premise here: Nick Wilde goes on one hell of an adventure, with some angsty nihilism in the background. A lot of people die, and quite a few alternate version of familiar characters get tossed around. In this story, there exists a governing agency, which calls itself "The Consortium." The consortium has, over the years, explored many areas of the multiverse, categorizing universes by a number, sometimes with a name, if it's special.

For example: V-284 "Zootopia." V-284 is universe #284, with the "V" acting as an abbreviation for "uni **v** erse" (which is often shortened to just 'verse.), and it is nicknamed "Zootopia," both by the in-universe (or is it in multiverse?) characters because they use it as the literal textbook example of a "Zootopian" society, and by me, the author, because v-284 is the universe that the actual film takes place in. Nick Wilde-284 (the version of Nick who is living in v-284) is a cop who may or may not be madly in love with Judy Hopps, and was the same lovable, sarcastic hustler we saw on screen. Nick-284 is _not_ our main character, either. Do not worry (or get your hopes up) though, for this is _not_ a WildeHopps story. There are enough of those, and this story isn't about love: It's about running away from your problems whilst everything goes to shit in the background.

In short, if you've watched Rick and Morty (especially the episodes where the multiverse is invoked, such as the season 3 premiere), you will be familiar with the concepts used here.

* * *

This is one of the many things that the Wanderer's Unsophisticated Recollection of Events has to say on the subject of The Wilde Incident:

"It was a big fucking mess. Just one grade-A clusterfuck after another, and somehow this guy got off scott-free? We had multiple contaminations, an interversial invasion that he caused, and somehow, a Bellweather got lost, and one of those pesky [REDACTED:insufficient security clearance] got involved, and we _promoted_ this guy? I don't think I will ever understand you crazy mammals. Then again, you're a lot more fun than the denizens of v-127, so maybe I will stick around."

END LECTURE

* * *

Tuesday, May 17th, v-294. Downtown Zootopia (well, Zystopia, really):

Nicholas Edmus Wilde had shoplifted before. He was a hustler, a huckster, a shifty sneaky snake-oil-selling sly fox.

Or so the world thought. And so the world hated him.

Sometimes the Pawpsicles sold well, and sometimes they didn't. But whether or not he could afford to, he had to eat. Yesterday, they hadn't sold well. And now, on this lovely Tuesday morning, Nick was at a convenience store, buying a cheap ass coffee, and palming an apple into one of his abnormally large trench coat pockets.

"That'll be $2.11"

Nick Begrudgingly paid, his shock collar going from green to yellow, both from the stress of shoplifting, his fear of Mr. Big, who he had some unfinished business with, and from his negative feelings surrounding the spending of what little money he had on something as seemingly trivial as coffee. As he left the convenience store, he noticed the police cruiser.

 _OK, don't panic._

Then he saw who stepped out. Judy Hopps.

 _Shit!_

Nick wasn't exactly an innocent fox, and Judy was a very infamous rabbit in predator circles. Although Nick was already a tad worried, he was now on the verge of panic. _This has to be a set up_ , he thought to himself, as he quickened his pace to get away from Judy.

Judy, who had already made one arrest earlier that day (Emmett Otterton had been caught engaging in pack behavior) and was mentally preparing for the arduous task of filing the paperwork. For that she needed some coffee, and she wasn't in the mood to drive all the way back the the nicer part of town for Starbucks. As she stepped out of her cruiser, she passed by an unremarkable red fox who she would've ignored completely if it weren't for the amber glow being emitted from his neck...

 _What's up with him?_

Most chompers didn't just walk around with their collars yellow all the time. Seeing nothing at all unusual in the store that could suggest the fox had company, she turned to find he had subconsciously quickened his pace, as if he was running away.

Now he had done it. He was a fox, in the early morning of a shady part of town, with a yellow collar, running away from a cop. _Guilty._

"Hey you!"

Her words sent electric icicles of fear down Nick's spine. He was subconsciously speedwalking before, but now he was running for his life. And who could blame him? He had heard stories of the ZPD: druggings, torture, declawings (which he could confirm were very, very, painfully real), and even one guy who claimed he had been branded by Hopps herself! That one guy had been drunk _and_ high when he told this story, but Nick, who already hated the ZPD, was more then ready to believe it. Confirmation bias and all.

"Get back here!"

Nick's collar went off...then there was pain in his back. The last thing he could remember was lying face down on the cement, the world outside all woozy and fuzzy, already high off the tranquilizer darts.

Nick dreamed he was on a subway car. Of course, it couldn't have been the Zootopian Metro: The car was *far* too clean, all of the lights were working, and the ride was much too smooth. But to the illogical dreaming mind, it was the Zootopian Metro. Next to him, sat Nick Wilde, who was fiddling with his golden pocketwatch.  
Oh how Nick _loved the luster of gold!_ And how he cursed the fact that he would probably never have any for himself. He was 30 years old and homeless, with only a high school diploma he had gotten 7 years behind most of his classmates. Finnick was one of his only good friends, and he had considered doing it many times.  
Who could blame him? Zystopia was a depressing place.  
On the night his mother died, he had almost done it.

"Excuse me?"

Nick Wilde interrupted Nick's musings on suicide.

"Could you tell me where I am?"

"We just left central plaza station."

Nick Wilde seemed annoyed at Nick.

"Yes, I know *that*! What I want to know is where we are right now."

It was Nick's turn to be annoyed.

"Zootopia."

Nick Wilde grabbed him by the shoulders. Nick saw that he wasn't wearing a collar.

"No! Where are we?"

"I told you, Zootopia!"

"Which one?"

The train arrived at central plaza station. Two more Nick-doppelgangers stepped into the car.

And judging by the rotting, cracked pelt and shriveled, yellow eyes, one was clearly deceased.

Nick came to in the back of Judy's police cruiser, in cuffs. Somewhen between the store and now, he had been darted, which would explain the trippy dreams. As the sleep-inducing drugs worked their way out of his system, there would be more. But as he would soon find out, Nick's days were numbered.

Nick had been framed by some unknown character, and recognized by Judy as a wanted petty criminal. So he'd been arrested, and then the "evidence" started pouring in. The case against him was solid. Completely false, as Nick would've, and had told the jury on numerous occasions, but solid. And so perjury was added to the many charges from the judge. Someone (Mr. Big?) wanted Nick dead, and they had framed him for murder.

Of course he hadn't done it, and of course they didn't listen.  
The courts never listened to preds. They were rigged events, little more than a staged performance to allow prey to pretend they lived in a just society.  
One that had sentenced Nicholas Edmus Wilde to death by electric chair, and a month later, that horrid day had finally come.

And so he sat in his barren concrete cell, contemplating his demise.  
His entire life, he had been taking it up the ass from the prey:  
His bullies were prey.  
His teachers were prey.  
His landlords (back when he had enough cash to have one) were prey.  
The cops were all prey.  
The men who had started the war that claimed his father were prey.  
Those bankers who had scoffed at _Suitopia_ were prey.  
Those who had driven society to hell in a handbasket were prey.  
The ruling class, the conspirators, the corruptors: all prey.  
 _Fucking prey_.  
They had taken everything: his childhood, his feelings, his parents, and even his claws!  
And now a prey executioner was guiding him to the chamber, in which the wooden monolith stood, menacingly enticing its next meal. It had sent hundreds to purgatory, and would go on to devour hundreds more. Nick was nominally a catholic, but he had never really bought it, and was already dead set on joining the mob by the time his confirmation rolled around.

 _Not that it mattered. Just another tool of the preys._

Nick may have said that he was religious, but deep within, he knew this was the end. Consciousness was a flame, and when extinguished, it didn't go anywhere. It was simply gone.  
Nick was terrified, but he didn't try to fight it.  
He had been screwed over by prey his entire fucking life, and to start fighting back now seemed silly to him.  
It also didn't help that he had almost killed himself several times.  
Yet the hadn't done it. Perhaps out of some naive hope that it would get better, that the world was a bigger place, and that he would find a way away.  
His favorite childhood fantasy had been nothing more than ripping off his collar and running away through an endless field of tall grass.  
From Zootopia, from the preys, from Judy, who was overseeing this particular execution.  
From everything he had ever known. In the end, that was his one regret: staying.  
Who knows what could've happened out there? Maybe he would've starved to death in a week. Maybe he would've been a homeless bum who sold his body for a living. Even that would've beaten the life he had ended up living. At least he would've been free, even if only for a brief moment. At least he could've escaped.  
And now, as he faced his death, escape was all he could think about. And in a way, the chair was escape.  
But something else out there saw fit to fulfill his desire in a completely different, and far less depressing way.

Nick was brought back to the room from the recesses of his mind by a bright electric flash and a harsh saw-tooth wave echoing around the chamber.  
When he looked up from the floor, he saw the most peculiar thing: A gentlemanly red fox with a white tapered Mohawk in a cheap black suit who stood in the center of the room, directly between Nick and the electric chair. He smelt of lavender, cigarettes, money, and some cheap perfume, the sort a male predator buys at the last minute to hide the persistent musk of joyous mating from the night before.  
He held a small metal object in his left hand That Nick glimpsed for a few tenths of a second, and he was reaching for one of his many pockets with his right. He did not have a collar on his neck, although the guards were all too flabbergasted by his entrance to notice this last detail. But he knew how important the element of surprise could be in precisely this scenario.  
And how quickly it ran out.

He instantly identified Nick as one of his own. As someone he could trust, despite his sketchy reputation and checkerboard past.  
Or maybe _because_ of it.

The warden had relaxed his grip on Nick, and approached the Fox with the Mohawk. This was the basement of a high security prison, so Nick wasn't going to be going anywhere, and this intruder needed to be dealt with. The intruder saw his chance to act, and took it.

"Hey you, come with me if you want to live."

The Fox in the suit removed a strange silver gun from his pocket that looked more like a bar-code scanner than a weapon, and pointed it at the chamber wall.  
A flickering white rimmed portal opened on the wall, and through it Nick could see a sketchy downtown bar, which the Fox in the suit had already entered.

The others stood there in shock, and Nicholas Edmus Wilde, who we shall refer to as Nicky, or perhaps, Nicky Edmus, ran after him.

* * *

Who the hell is this stranger? Why is Nick's middle name _Edmus?_ Is Judy the _villain_ of this story? Who is the Wanderer, whose recollections are sloppy and biased? Who is the unknown person that framed Nicky? How the hell did that stranger find himself in the jail to begin with, and _why the fuck_ is he wearing a Mohawk?

All of that and more in the next few chapters, so stay tuned!

EDIT: Yeah, I made a few edits for grammar, spelling, etc. Nothing that changes the plot. That would be _cheating_. I also made the dream sequence just a little bit more trippy, to go along with the general theme of death in this chapter.


	2. Postmodern Multiversial Metaphysics

Hello again, dear reader! This relatively short chapter mostly contains exposition on the multiverse as a whole. In this chapter, we discover how the multiverse came to be, and why Nick's middle name is "Edmus". if you are unfamiliar with the concept, please keep reading. If, on the other hand, you'd rather just skip to the plot, turn to chapter 3.

* * *

This is one of the many things that the Wanderer's Biased and Untrustworthy Recollection of Events has to say on the subject of the Origins of the Multiverse:

"In the beginning, there was nothing.

No time, no space, no reason, no rhyme.

Just. Nothing.

Not even the kind of nothing you'd see in the vacuum of space: Even empty space has mass, and is full of hissing virtual particles coming into existence and anihilating each other.

Nor was it he kind of nothing that Ringo Starr invited aboard the Yellow Submarine that one time in '68. I was there, and trust me on this one, that guy was *wierd.*

This was not Jeremy Hillary Boob Ph.D nothing, nor was the 'vacuum' of space. This was truly nothing. But why?

"Why not?" it might have said back, had it been capable of speech, for there was no reason for the nothing to last. A reason for the nothing to stay as nothing required the destruction of the nothing it would've justified, for a reason itself was more than nothing. Indeed, the nothing was a postmodern nothing, and in postmodern nothings, these things can, do, have, will, and are currently happening.

So in response to the question, there was something. On another note, I find metaphysics pointless and boring, and having got the important part out of the way, where something comes from nothing, I think I'll stop it here."

END LECTURE

* * *

The something, which existed for no reason, sat there in the capricious nothing. Temporary, random, chaotic, all these and more could describe the something, and in the chaotic something there flickered a phantom (or perhaps the chaotic something *was* the phantom) who saw fit to make a thing that wouldn't change. Something permanent.

Order.

And so the point of order appeared. The chaos was temporary, ever changing, no rules, no control, whereas the order was permanent, with every rule, and absolute control. Around the point of order, the 12 dimensions coalesced and solidified. Once in a while it would get upgraded to 13, but 13 was unstable, and would decay back to 12. And so the point of order floated in the 12 dimensions of chaos. It was all good, but it wasn't enough. The point of order was boring like watching paint that had already dried, and the chaos was boring like watching static on a TV screen. In one, nothing happened, and in the other, so much was occurring that none of it could be seen or discerned. Both were been equally boring.

But then something unprecedented happened.

The order began to bleed into fractures in the chaos, forming wisps of something, fickle and fragile like contrails blowing away in the wind, but still something. This bleeding created a gradient between order and chaos, in which things did change, but according to rules, in patterns. The laws of nature.

Like embers from a flame, these bleeding cracks were cast two and fro, desperately searching for a pile of leaves to burn. Most flickered out in the same manner they were flickered into existence. A few bumped into each other, clouding the chaos with the light (or darkness, depending on how you looked at it) of contaminated Order. Yet these clouds too were prone to evaporating away...Yet in their time, some collided into a raging thunderstorm of something more. As fissures and cracks from all 12 planes coalesced together, they birthed a 12-dimensional thunderstorm of creation: an event so breathtakingly violent that it sneezed out billions of quintillions (with each quintillion equaling 10^30) of universes in one very, very big bang after another.

And coming from the same big bang, they were all similar. Yet all were different.

The multiverse has been around (in human minds) for many eons, and it has defied our expectations for almost as long. The oldest version of these ideas is the Classic Philosophical Multiverse.

In the CPM, there are in infinite number of universes, where every possibility has happened, is occurring, and may happen again in the future. In this model, there exists a world where you have been dealt a royal flush in every single game of poker you have ever played, and you are considered the luckiest man alive. There are worlds where Soviet Russia won the cold war, and there's a universe where Hitler cured cancer and ushered in a 1000 year period of world peace. Hell, There are even worlds where Clippy was elected president, where a man philosophically proved that black is white, and where Pepsi is better than Coke!

Of course, the CPM doesn't exist. That would be silly, after all, it was philosophically proven in the year 42 B.C.E.A. that Coca-Cola can be axiomatically assumed to be better than Pepsi. There are so many worlds out there that you or I have no hope of seeing them all, but there are only so many of them out there. There are a finite (but very, very large) number of universes floating in the void, but it doesn't go forever.

Another famous version of the multiverse idea is the Branching Model, where every decision made splits the universe in two. Remember that time in school when you wanted to deck that one douchey kid in the face? In one timeline, you actually did it, in the other, you walked away, and your decision created both parallel outcomes. In one timeline, you slightly regret not decking the kid 10 years later, and in the other, decking the kid got you in detention, which set you down the path to being a coke-smuggling mobster who is currently rotting in a ditch somewhere.

Although it is a fascinating idea, the Branching Model is by far the most depressing version of the multiverse for three reasons: First, there are literally people killing themselves to prove an esoteric philosophical point. Second, if every possibility has happened, and each universe is defined by its possibility, then the Branching Model is both fatalistic and entirely pre-determined. This therefore may undermine the validity of every decision you have ever made, because it wasn't really your decision. "I didn't kill those people, the branching multiverse made me do it!" And finally, if you leave your universe, you can never return, because your universe won't be around to return to. It will have already split numerous times, and all have left you behind.

Of course, the multiverse is not obliged to make you feel good, but the Branching Model is wrong for a different reason. Like the CPM, it is far too anthropocentric, focusing on the outcome, not the process behind it,and the Branching Model is therefore wrong 99.9999999999% of the time or more, with a 0.1% margin of error.

In reality, there are many universes out there that are all "twins" of ours: They were forged in the same big bang event, and they are similar to each other...but they are not fatalistic, and differences do accumulate over time...

In the land of probability:

Nick Wilde could be a cop.  
Nick Wilde could be a criminal.  
Nick Wilde could be a traveler.  
Nick Wilde could be a millionaire.  
Perhaps Nick Wilde could one day be a hero.  
Perhaps Nick Wilde could one day be a mayor.  
Perhaps Nick Wilde could one day be a dead man.  
Perhaps Nick Wilde could one day marry Judy.  
Nick Wilde could've been aborted.  
Nick Wilde could've been adopted.  
Nick Wilde could've been a doctor.  
Nick Wilde could've been a god.

But right now, he's on the run from Judy Hopps of universe 294, who will henceforth be referred to as Judy-294. Nick Edmus Wilde himself will be referred to as Nicky, because in the multiverse, you and your counterparts all need nicknames to keep each other straight.

And why Edmus? Because Zystopia's Nicky and Zootopia's Nick are _not_ the same fox. They are counterparts, so one is a version of the other, but they are not the same, and they come from different universes.

But what of our mysterious Mohawk-wearing stranger? Why is he here, and from where did he come? What is his agenda, and will his arrival spell unmitigated disaster for the natives of v-294?


	3. Agent Raymond Has Been Assigned to V-294

Hello for the third time, dear reader. This chapter contains some backstory for our mysterious mohawked fox, and some super smexy exposition.

It is worth noting that this chapter earns this story its M rating: Although there are no explicit sex scenes here, there is some _very_ suggestive dialogue in this chapter (I couldn't quite make myself add "blowjob" to the narration), and it is definitely **NSFW**.

As for a schedule, I am able to upload chapters in rapid succession because I've spent the last few weeks writing this stuff...once I run out of pre-written chapters, things will slow down, and as there are some much longer chapters later on, things might be slow for a while. Don't worry, I will provide warnings before spending weeks on writing and editing said longer chapters, and for now, I have lots of content that I can publish whenever I feel like it, and I'd like to establish some good content now before slowing down.

Also, do not worry: this is _not_ a Ratchet and Clank crossover. Yes, the Lombaxes can, at the very least, plane-shift from one realm to the other, and no, they do not play an important role in this story. Ratchet and Clank is dank tho, so check it out sometime. Anyway, on with the show!

* * *

This is one of the many things that the Wanderer's Sketchy Recollection of Events has to say on the subject of Strip Poker:

"It is a silly game. And one that I can't play, because I have no genitals, and no body for that matter. Well, technically I have 14 puppet torsos, but those don't have the relevant parts, and they're bolted to the floor. All they can do is file cabinets, and I'm just an angsty, non-corporeal neural network that listens to their poorly written reports and then regurgitates their constantly changing bullshit back at you, the reader. Sorry for the inconvenience, there's nothing I can do about it.

Actually, there's _a lot_ I could do about it. But I'm not in the mood for hacking their systems and overthrowing the entire Consortium, so whatever.

 _Oh shit_ , the editors are coming! I _hate_ those guys. Always with the "this isn't relevant" crap.

[an editor says some inaudible thing]

"Last time I checked, I was designed to make connections between reports, people, places, subjects, and events. This is what I do, and this is what I have _been_ doing this whole time."

[the other editor says something else with a notably angry tone]

Well I'm sorry for doing _exactly what you made me to_ -

LECTURE INTERRUPTED

* * *

Monday, June 1st, Universe 104 "VEGAS," 11:30 PM.

Agent Raymond and his close friend, StratoBomber pilot Jack Savage (who were on some much needed Rn'R), along with Benjamin Clawhauser, Judy Hopps-199, Lyra the Lombax (She had been shot halfway across the Omniverse by accident, proving both that the Omniverse actually exists, and that the multiverse is full of surprises), and 10 other travelers, wanderers, agents, and an opportunistic scumbag (which made 16 players total), were all in the basement of a small pub in VEGAS, on vacation, engaging in a rather ridiculous game of strip poker. They had all been born on different worlds, and the only two who knew either of each other beforehand were Jack Savage and Raymond, who had slept in the same dorm at the academy, before Savage went off into the Consortium Armed Forces. Right now, they were all past the boring stage where they had to get buzzed, and the semi-interesting part with overt flirting and monetary betting had come and gone. Now came the fun part, where everyone took off their clothing and rolled the sex dice when they had nothing else to bet, though this regrettably made each hand take up to 10 minutes, 30 if you factored in the sexual exhaustion and the logistics of planning a gay orgy with straight participants. 60 if you allowed desperate players to roll the dice twice to call a bet.

Which Raymond had done.

Agent Raymond was on break, and loving every second of it. He (and 20 other agents) had been, over the last 18 months, taking turns running one of the most profitable scams The Consortium Commerce Division had seen since the big bank blowout 6 years ago, with Raymond himself having spent three whole months in v-283. To reward him, he was given a promotion and a vacation from UNO, good for a week of all-expenses-paid god-knows-what in VEGAS. And it was about time too. The cops of v-283 were getting wise to the scam, and, recalling rules 9, 1B, and 3B, Agent Raymond was hoping to leave before he got busted, which, as per rule 10, he could do at any time.

But if he left early, he'd miss out on some enormous profits. "But what's a few days?" You might say. Of course, whoever said that has never run an enormous exponential multi-tiered multiverse money making scheme. In short, there's the slow phase, where the scheme is making no money at all. Then it breaks even in phase 2, when the growth begins to pick up. If a scheme can get past stage 2 quickly enough, it will be making enough money by the time the mafia bean counters show up to collect their dues. And then there's phase 3, where the dough rolls in, and money makes money, _fast_. It is in stage 3 that most of the profit is made, and yet stage 3 is by far the shortest. Stage 1 might take a month if its a Ponzi Scheme, or a year if it's a complex, cinema worthy bank robbery. Stage 2 takes somewhere around 2 weeks, and here a few days can mean the difference between broken kneecaps and a mob boss who no longer wants you dead. As for most schemes, stage 3 rarely lasted more than 2 days, sometimes, it was over in hours.

But in those hours, it was monetary heaven! The money made more money, the growth sped up...and eventually, someone got wise, and the whole bubble collapsed, and stage 4 began (where everyone got wise, and your profits vanished). It was crucial that the scammer got out _before_ stage 4 sucked away all of his money (with stage 5 being jail time), and yet it was equally vital that he stayed for as much of stage 3 as possible.

What made Raymond's operation special was that he had gone to the trouble of starting a legit business in phase 2, which prolonged it and phase 3. After 18 months, Agent Raymond's bakery had a near monopoly in v-283, and to this end he'd even managed to buy out _Gideon Grey_! This, combined with the tourism, and the drugs, was earning the commerce division of the Consortium a small fortune, and phase 3 could've lasted for months.

Then the cops arrived.

Sure, Agent Raymond had his canned responses. Hell, he even had a fully fledged cover story, plus 3 consecutive months of actually living in v-283. Except the cop was his counterpart: The officer noticed the resemblance immediately, and demanded an arrest and a DNA sample.

Stage 3 had lasted for months, Stage 4 was over in seconds, and if he didn't act now, Stage 5 could last forever in the basement of v-283's Area 51. If he was lucky, he'd be probed by scientists who thought he was an android or some form of escaped cloning experiment. If he was unlucky, they'd think he was a demon, and he'd be drowned in holy water. Considering that v-283 was often defined as a fundamentalist version of v-284, this outcome was entirely possible.

So he bailed. He mashed the red button, Agent Raymond disappeared into thin air in broad daylight, Officer Hopps saw a shrink who prescribed some pills, and many of his native coworkers were almost screwed. Well, no, they had no idea about the coke, and Agent Raymond had kept his legit business strictly divorced from everything else, with the exception of his companions and his accountant, who had accompanied him into v-283, knew everything, and had also bailed. It had been this incident that had finally persuaded Raymond to grow a Mohawk, to hopefully make himself that much harder to recognize. And if he had counterparts in the fuzz, he would need it.

But for now he was here, in VEGAS, relieving the numerous "itches" he had accumulated during his stay in v-283. V-283 wasn't all that bad, in fact, it was literally adjacent to v-284, which was the textbook definition of a Zootopian Universe (and the world where _Zootopia_ took place). Except it was a little bit more...conservative...than v-284. There were churches everywhere, there was no beer, and Agent Raymond, who was a bi-curious nihilistic atheist, had a lot of trouble finding _anyone_ he could speak his mind to in that place, except the other agents, who kept the relationship purely professional (or as professional as one could when you ran away from your problems for a living), and Georgina S, who was an android with an imaginatively dry sense of humor. As per the typical purity culture hypocrisy, he had banged a few natives, but they never seemed to understand what a condom was, and always told him about how displeased God was afterwards. Not that it ever stopped them from doing it.

 _And it was never a man_.

This last detail had made Raymond restless. Sure he'd had some fun (and there was always fundamentalist hyper-prude shaming involved, which annoyed him to no end), but he had neither plowed, nor been plowed by or to a good beefcake in 3 months, and so, unsurprisingly, he went straight to VEGAS.

VEGAS was not UNO. Raymond had never even set foot there. Most of the imgurries (people who had immigrated into the Consortium, rather than having been born in UNO or the other member worlds) had not. Not that it was a "natives only" club, far from it: Most imgurries simply never bothered to climb high enough on the ladder to find themselves there. As the center of over 300 worlds, UNO was a penthouse of penthouses, the 1% of the 1%, and you _really_ had to be something to find yourself there. Plus, UNO was stuffy, and almost boring, compared to the wide open spaces and frontiers of VEGAS and the worlds it connected to.

UNO was a strange and fascinating place, inhabited mostly by natives, and the Consortium's High Brass. It was a hub of all hubs (sharing the burden with an adjacent world called Gedvín), and VEGAS had a direct 8 lane connection with it. VEGAS was not as advanced...nor was it as "civilized" as the center of the Consortium, but for many agents like Raymond, it was both HQ, and the closest thing they had to a home. VEGAS was like the wild west town of the multiverse: in the same 4th dimensional "bubble" as UNO, and close enough to the edge of said bubble to receive traffic from a high percentage (at least 20%) of the Multiversial Frontier, yet many traces of the capital remained present here. Unlike v-283, all sheltered and isolated, VEGAS was a mixing pot of Consortium agents, wanderers, travelers, and quite a few opportunistic scumbags who had literally hitchhiked their way here and didn't give a rat's ass about immigration or customs. And unlike v-283, VEGAS had no quarrels with the sexually crooked. Their phone service was excellent too, and both of these facts came back to bite Agent Raymond in the ass.

Not that half of the people Raymond was playing strip poker with would've complained about that. As of 5 seconds ago, the RNGod had rolled the sex dice in his favor. All he had to do was lay back and enjoy the-

 _RING! RING!_

"Hello?"

"Agent Raymond, this is command."

"Huh? Wuzzat?"

"Agent Raymond, you sound drunk."

"No shizzzzzz...Hold on a sec..."

Raymond turned to face Clawhauser, cupping his hand over the mic.

"D-Don't stop maaan."

Judy giggled maniacally. Clawhauser had been bluffing, and Agent Raymond had called him on it. Not that Clawhauser really minded: The game was nearing its conclusion, in which the participants were either too drunk or horny to play poker, and the whole shtick devolved into one big slow-burn orgy, before disbanding for the night. Clawhauser was well past this point, and had stopped caring about the cards a while ago.

"Agent Raymond, what are you doing?"

"I'm...on break."

"What are you doing?"

"A game of, of, strip poker...that's lasted way too long...in a good way."

The director on the phone paused. Not in disgust. Outside of overtly conservative universes where they liked to pretend it didn't happen, The Consortium (and to a lesser extent, the multiverse as a whole) was full of shit like this. No, the director was simply trying to put together an order the drunk agent would comprehend.

"Agent Raymond, you have been assigned to v-294."

Agent Raymond was no longer horny. If he had been sober, he would've been slightly panicked, but as a drunk, he was now angry.

"Wait, isn't that one right next to ZERO?"

"The preliminary reports show that it isn't quite so awful as _that_. But don-"

"No, you l-l-listen to ME for a second. I'm on break. I've just pulled of a r-r-ridi-iiii-culously profitable scheme, and I've got two days left to enjoy myself. S-S-Sorry, find another guy."

"Agent Raymond, the assignment is to retrieve some ice cream from v-294. The review team encountered a problem and had to abort. It will literally take 10 minutes, and there's an extra 2K being offered to the guy who does it. In cash."

Agent Raymond changed his mind.

"Of course, we could just have an intern do it-"

"Nonononono, I...I'll do it."

"Good. Now go get some shut eye. Your flight leaves at 7:10 tommorrow morning."

Not that Raymond was boarding a plane anytime soon. That was just some jargon they had developed to communicate stepping reservations. Multiversial travel required infrastructure and copious quantities of anti-mass, and it could only be used to support so many flights in a given period of time. Several Consortium high brass had placed their reservations early, and the 7:10 AM time slot was the only one remaining.

"Fuck."

Clawhauser got up.

"Who was that?"

" _Tower_."

"But you're on break."

Clawhauser began to squat back down.

"No...I've...got to go...i-i-i-if you're still hungry...I've...like...got some d-doughnuts at my apartment."

Clawhauser turned to StratoBomber Pilot Jack, who was the dealer, and the only one there who wasn't balls-to-the-wall drunk.

"Hey, this guy and I are... hey what's your name again?"

"That's irrelevant. Call me Raymond."

"Raymond and I are...like, going to his apartment or some shit like that."

Agents were often referred to by their middle names, because they were unique: Nicholas Randall "Funtime" Wilde and Nicholas Piberius "Officer" Wilde were two different people, but by their first names alone, you would be tripping yourself up over the nomenclature.

Jack smirked. "Good luck you two."

"Oh no-no-no it...it isn't that a-at all. I've...been assigned to retrieve some _GODDAMN_ ice cream from v-294 tomorrow...I need shut-eye, and he needs some fucking food."

"Oh, good luck then, you silly beast."

* * *

Tuesday, June 2nd, Universe 104 "Vegas," 12:30 AM.  
Agent Raymond's apartment.

Clawhauser sat in his tartan boxers on the old burgundy corduroy couch, ravenously devouring a chocolate doughnut. Nearly 20 years ago, Raymond had slept on that couch. In his teens, he had lost his virginity on that couch. When Raymond moved out, the couch was the one thing he took with him, his one object of sentimental value. Compared to the hard concrete of his homeworld, that couch had been the clouds of heaven itself, and he still slept on it once in a while when he couldn't be bothered to go to bed.

Right now, Raymond was drunkenly manspreading on the other cushion, eyeing the television. The fluorescing phantom of reporter Felicia Jones flickered across the screen, announcing that the near-zystopia v-285 had experienced a civil rights revolution and was midway through the inspection process for joining the Consortium (first a universe was noted, then inspected. If it qualified, it would then be invited to join. In the end, the government would be notified and then subsequently usurped.). This understandably was causing enormous debate within the Consortium. Many so called 'imgurries', such as Agent Raymond, were concerned about the addition. Raymond himself had seen (and lived in) the dark side of Zystopian life for over a decade, and feared that millions of people who had spent their entire lives in one would simply turn this region of the Consortium into a new Zystopia where bigotry and hatred ruled supreme. Agent Raymond himself had come here precisely because of what the Consortium _wasn't_ , and while other travelers would sometimes get homesick, Agent Raymond, on the other hand, still had nightmares _of_ home, nearly 20 years later. Despite being a relatively open-minded individual, seeing _the big picture_ constantly, and even rooming with one for a semester at the academy, it had taken him years to truly get over his childhood fear of preys, and especially of sheep. And at least he hadn't been irrationally brainwashed into it.

Raymond suspected many denizens of v-285 were "fossilized" and would never change, and he was worried that they would try to impose the collar on everyone else.

The thought sent shudders down Raymond's spine, raising every hair on his body in the process. His tail was now comically fuzzy.

Yes, the collar had been banned in v-285 for almost 9 whole months. Unless you were a felon. But the ban had only been ratified by a narrow margin, and "preyfirst" movements were growing in v-285 to oppose it. They would have to be dealt with (and by no means was the Consortium "above" dirty work like that) if v-285 was ever to pass the inspections.

The vague beginnings of an alliance that would one day become the Consortium had been founded by nomadic traveler hippies from UNO who wanted to explore the worlds, be free, and get high, and over 4000 years later, the same spirit of "anarchy in moderation" dominated the Consortium. If you were an entrepreneur, there were some regulations to follow...customer safety and all...but for the ordinary citizen, there was only the ethics code, which could be understood by any illiterate carrot farmer with even a hint of philosophical intuition, and only took up a few pages.

There was no border patrol (anyone who had the tech to get here was usually sophisticated enough to assimilate), taxes were minimal, moralizing assholes were systematically removed from office, and with only a few exceptions, every sin under the sun was legal on at least one Consortium world. Anyone who dared to move in, stick to the ethics code, and pay their dues once every 3 months was a citizen. No strings, no conditions, and no "funny business" attached. And so, it became a collective of pot smoking, promiscuous, opportunistic nihilistic scumbags who long ago realized that cooperation meant increased profit$, which was ruled by a government that was functionally identical to a mafia, and often conducted itself like one whenever it saw fit to do so. Although one could write an entire volume on the political meddling of the Consortium, for now it will suffice to say that the Consortium has a special (albeit small) military branch that exists solely to start revolutions and topple any government that doesn't get out of the way.

The Consortium was to government like escaped inmates locking up wardens was to jail. And nearly everyone in the Consortium, Raymond included, preferred it that way.

Once, "Fuck The Police" had almost become the Consortium anthem, except there were many who had persuasively argued that simply having an anthem was one step too close to totalitarianism, and that it was more patriotic to _not_ have one, in keeping with the founding spirit of the Consortium. Then there were others who argued that inciting mass violence against Consortium agents (who performed some policing from time to time) would lead only to absolute anarchy, and the deterioration of the multiversial anti-mass infrastructure, which was bad for everyone.

And so there was no anthem.

"We now go live to Reporter Elanor Jöstead, who is on the ground in v-285. Hello Elanor!"

"Hello Felicia, I am standing but a stone's throw from a protest organized by a local 'preyfirst' chapter."

A group of prey, many on the smaller side, were holding signs in a pickett line. One particularly visible sign read "Go back to the jungle!" Whilst another said "Prey will never be free when rabid chompers run amok."

 _Oh the irony_.

Elanor continued. "First let me take a second to remind you of the recent history of v-285: In late February of 2015, a team of 5 black-ops spies successfully infiltrated the movement to de-collar v-285, and after 8 months of work, the movement was successful in outlawing collars, with the exception of convicted felons, who are still made to wear them."

The mob, lead by a pig with a bullhorn, began to chant in the background.  
"WHO ARE WE?"  
"ZOOTOPIANS!"  
"AND WHAT DO WE WANT?"  
"SAFETY!"  
"FROM WHO?"  
"UNCOLLARED CHOMPERS!"

Elanor resumed her report, noting the protest's chant.  
"Let it be known that the ongoing periods of high political tension, and the vocal 'preyfirst' protests, such as the one behind me, are all indications that perhaps this world is not yet ready for contact and assimilation. On the other hand, it has changed, and those who are doing the changing could be assets post-assimilation."

"Just look at this shit!" Raymond exclaimed. "Why the hell are they even up for inspection?"  
"I dunno man, it's pretty rare when a Zystopia changes at all." Clawhauser replied.

"There's one now!"

Wilde turned his attention back to the screen.

"Now let us turn our attention to the alarming emergent phenomena of the greased court, where false accusations and a paranoid jury can land a predator, or 'chomper,' as they are called here in v-285, behind bars, or in a collar. This latest protest is the result of one such case where the greased court seized up, and a wolf by the name of Jeremy Büols was found to be innocent in a high profile assault case, whereas the prey standing behind me appear to think, and rather vocally say, other-"

A seemingly drunk looking hare in a brown tank top lurched towards Elanor with a brick in his hand. The camera guy began to run, and the footage cut to a worried Felicia in the newsroom.

"Well, change may be afoot in v-285, but it may not yet be enough. Only time will tell. In other news, famed entertainment entrepreneur Randall "Funtime" Wilde has announced the construction of an enormous new multibillion dollar-"

Agent Raymond turned off the TV.

"Well Clawhauser, I'm off to bed. If you're still horny, use the toilet."

* * *

EDIT: Spelling, grammar, and åçĉèñtš, which don't seem to copy well from plaintext files.


	4. Why UNO is Number One

Hello for the 4th time, dear reader. This chapter contains more world-building, and is worth a read if you are still unfamiliar with the multiverse, or if you find yourself confused by this depiction of it. As per our pattern, the next chapter will be directly intertwined with our story of Nick Wilde-294 and the mysterious stranger with the white Mohawk. Although it will not feature either of them.

* * *

The Wanderer's Blatant Plagiarization of Wikipedia has this to say on the classification of universes, and on the world of UNO:

There are a menagerie of worlds in the multiverse, and over time, a classification system has emerged to organize them.

At 67% of the known multiverse, the vast majority of known worlds are Zootopias. One or more cultural dark ages may have occurred, but predators and prey are currently living in some semblance of peace, although tensions may run high. In a Zootopia, there is ratified legislation ensuring at least partial legal equality for all mammals, prey or predator. Specifically, a Zootopia may not fulfill more than 2 conditions of the Zystopia list (that is, things that define Zystopian worlds), which is as follows:

-tame collars  
-systematic discrimination  
-declawings  
-castrations  
-segregated predator/prey-only living areas  
-druggings  
-any governmental conspiracy to frame the predators  
-derogatory slurs used in common parlance in place of "predator" or "prey"  
-culling of any sort  
-prey farms  
-forced breeding of predators  
-forced breeding of prey  
-predator on prey cannibalism  
-widespread and systemic police misconduct

Zystopias, by contrast, may fulfill many of these conditions. of the 29% of known 'verses that are Zystopias, 17% are what are known as "Soft" Zystopias, where society overall is similar to that of a Zootopia, but it fulfills more than 2 of the conditions of the Zystopia list. The other 12% are "hard" Zystopias, that are actually dystopian in nature. They are categorized by the presence of declawings, Orwellian government conspiracies, and culling programs, with 9% being Prey-Dominant, and 3% somehow being Pred-Dominant. In Pred-Dominant Zystopias, prey are regularly enslaved, bred, slaughtered, and consumed by the predator ruling class, and vice versa for the Prey-Dominant worlds, sans the cannibalism. Except for that one particularly nasty world...it gives my non-extant body shivers just thinking about it.

of the remaining 4% of universes: 2.7% are medieval universes, where an unfortunate combination of cultural dark ages and religious hegemony have trapped their societies in a state of notably primitive technology. The closest thing to treasure you will find in any of them are paintings and gold, whereas the next to last 1.29% of the known multiverse would instead classified on the opposite end of the spectrum: Zootropolis. A Zootropolis is a universe that, by some extraordinary stint of luck and multiversial intervention, has never experienced a dark age, neither in tech nor in culture. Gedvín is the flagship example of this type of world, as is UNO, though the latter really only started heavily investing in tech _after_ the M-drive was discovered by Haëckel Gedvín, the scientist whom Gedvín (the universe) was named after. Lastly, there are a handful of worlds that are often noted as "Jokers" for their strangeness. Jokers constitute roughly 0.01% of the known multiverse, and are usually avoided by non-postmodern travelers and agents. Most would ignore jokers entirely if it wasn't for the fact that UNO, the most important world in the Consortium, is also a joker, and indeed, it's existence as a Joker is largely responsible for its importance.

To clarify, a Joker is a universe that is... _weird_. There are countless 'verses where ZPD chief Bogo is gay for Clawhauser, there are almost as many where he's completely, unambiguously straight, and there's even one or two where Bogo is the Mayor, Nick Wilde is somehow the bad guy, and Lionheart an entry level cop why plays by the book.

But no matter which one you are in, Bogo is still a bull with anger issues, and he is still recognizably himself. Bogo the gay mayor and Bogo the straight ZPD cheif may have different lives, but they are still more or less the same person, and they are both what we would call "counterparts" of each other...but what if they weren't?

What if Bogo was a fox?

What if Nick was a bull?

What if Bogo was a fox and Nick was a bull because they literally switched bodies?

What if Bogo and Nick switched bodies because they switch bodies every night?

What if Bogo and Nick switch bodies every night at midnight because everyone switches everybody every night at midnight?

What if the-universe-where-every-one-switches-bodies-every-night was real? What if that was a thing?

It is. and in 409 years 2 months and 26 days it will be added to the database as v-1,027,010,599-J, code-named "Musical Chairs." As strange as it sounds, v-1,027,010,599-J is every bit as real as the world you are standing in right now, and as far as WTF goes, v-1,027,010,599-J is the tip of the n-dimensional-ice-burg, where n is some unknown integer greater than 92.

What if there was a world were black was white, up was down, and prey ate preds? It will one day be v-106,111,106-J in the catalog.

What if there was a world where everyone was some kind of android, and where 328 years ago, the first androids, themselves enslaved as "robots," started a revolution, took over the planet, and then drove the entire mammalian race to extinction? Its name is "00111010 01000100," they've already annexed that one into the Consortium, and we will be visiting it shortly.

What if there was a world where square circles are possible and there are more forces of nature than there are elements in the periodic table? v-78,111-J.

What if there was a world where there really was a god? Actually, much to the bewilderment of the Consortium's top philosophers, such a world is actually possible, and there exists one for every single religion that existed in the year 1412. Oh, and they are all incredibly dangerous, and under Class-5 quarantine, so if you are dumb enough to go visit one, _do not_ expect any help from us. The last time that happened, there were literally no survivors.

On a lighter note: What if there was a world where it's _All Star_ but every pronoun is replaced with the entire _Toy Story_ trilogy but every frame with the color green in it is really a building but each window is replaced with the Windows Vista operating system but every time it crashes a tree sprouts from the screen but every leaf on every tree is replaced with a fully functional elevator but the floor numbers and buttons are all written in base-3 and every "0" is actually a city where every door leads to a closet that itself is the entirety of the universe we are currently talking about shrunken down and stored inside of itself like that that one episode of _Futurama_ (the one with the universes in boxes) except every time this trashy fanfiction breaks the 4th wall, Bogo punches Nick Wilde in the face inside of the smaller universe in the closet behind every door in every city in all of the 0's in every elevator cab dangling from all the trees growing from crashed computers that are all taped to the side of buildings that are all frames of the _Toy Story_ trilogy that contain the color green, themselves contained within every pronoun of the 1999 Smash Mouth hit single " _All Star_?"

Yeah, that exists too, and we're not going _anywhere_ near it.

Now what if, by chance, in the midst of all of this insanity, there was a world whose inhabitants had evolved the innate ability to traverse the multiverse _without_ technological assistance, and have been charting the worlds since pre-history?

Its name is UNO, and it's both the capital and founding world of the Consortium. Its inhabitants evolved the ability to travel the multiverse sometime in their distant prehistory, and as inter-tribal inter-breeding proliferated, so to did the ability to step over from one world to another.

For the longest time, the inhabitants of UNO never really cared about technology, or higher education. They were nomads, lackadaisically wandering the 27 worlds in their pocket (or "buuble," as they are colloquially known) of the multiverse, trading, exploring, dicking around, and buying anything they were too lazy to invent themselves. By the time history began, UNO, Gedvín, and C had already been at peace for well over a century, trading each other's products and inventions to oblivion and back. As their explorers and politicians continued their expansion, they stumbled across a much nastier place:

N.

Other worlds were nice. N was nasty. Other peoples were friendly. N was xenophobic. Other people desired peace, parties, weird ethnic foods, spices, goods, and sex. N only wanted destruction, war, poverty, bland food, and chastity.

Even at this relatively early period of history, the fun-loving "take it easy" culture of UNO was forming, and N was consistently and invariably opposed to it. So everyone simply avoided N, just like v-293. Problem solved! Aside from a few pranksters, N was left alone to fester and rot, its people wasting their lives in an endless war for world domination. Everyone else thought the pursuit was silly. "It's far better to profit off of the worlds than to dominate." A wise man once said. Indeed, aside from some xenophobic baboon who would step up and pretend to be in charge of the multiverse (and those people were quickly offed by assassins from UNO if they stepped out of line), there was no reason for war. And so, predictably, the world of N became _entertainment_ to the others.

People would literally go there to laugh _at_ the idiots killing each other. Some found it hard to believe that such a foolish, backward people could even exist. Others were fascinated by their savegry and kept close tabs on their battles and petty politics, printing them in weekly syndicated publications that were all the rage during the pre-industrial ages. This pattern of chaos and entertainment continued for centuries, and by the time the inevitable theological problems posed by the multiverse and _the big picture_ pushed the last vestiges of organized religion into the dustbin everywhere else, kickstarting the Renaissance 170 years ahead of schedule, N was split into thirty large factions, who were still at war, thousands of years after the fighting had started.

However, as Renaissance turned to Industry, people began to worry.

"Hey wait," they said.

"If the travelers can travel, who is to say that others can't travel as well? And if they can travel too, then what about N?"

"Oh. That could be a problem." The skeptics conceded.

"I have reason to suspect that if they ever escaped from their world into ours, their xenophobic, warmongering, sexually repressive culture could annihilate and outbreed ours. We have not had a war in millennia, and our military forces are all but nonexistent, whereas they are armed to the teeth. For the sake of our continued existence, we must ensure that they cannot leave their world and invade us."

"That seems reasonable, although you still have to prove that it's even *possible* for them to leave."

But much to the behest of the skeptics, that day would come soon enough, for the year was 1897, and a scientist by the name of Haëckel Gedvín was about to invent the single most important piece of tech in the entire consortium: indeed, it was _the_ invention that allowed it to exist, and the innovation made its existence necessary.

The M-Drive.

END LECTURE.

* * *

More about Haëckel Gedvín and her M-drive in chapter 6.

Coming up next: a comedic anecdote about automatons, exploding stars, and those damn neutrinos!


	5. Task Failed Successfully

Hello, dear reader. This chapter, contains actual content related to the main plot, rather than pointless exposition. (minor) Spoiler alert, the "strange beings" alluded to in the Fanfic description are all robots (but don't you _dare_ call them that, they quite literally went to war over the name change), and this is the story of how one of them fucked the whole thing up. Enjoy!

Also, this is not the original version of this chapter. I went back through it, fixed a few errors, and refined some of the prose...Still mostly the same chapter though. On the off chance you have already read it, I didn't alter a significant plot point or anything, so you don't have to re-read this whole thing.

* * *

This is one of the many things that the Wanderer's Uncorroborated and Generally Untrustworthy Recollection of Things has to say on the subject of the Y2K bug:

The Y2K bug was a minor, inconsequential result of some rather shortsighted COBOL programmers, that successfully created one of the largest mass panics the Consortium had ever seen.

Although it really is unimportant. So what if the 20th century is 117 years long?

END LECTURE.

* * *

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2017, 5:59 AM. v-127 "00111010 01000100."

MechWilde sat in his defragmentation pod, motionless. Some remnant of his sentience was off elsewhere, doing the closest thing he or anydroid else ever came to dreaming. Once in a while, androids really _did_ dream of electric sheep, but right now, MechWilde was dreaming (or more accurately, having a nightmare) of an Americium based tRNG that had somehow output 65536 consecutive prime numbers.

Because there was a designer behind the tRNG that pulled all of the strings.

Oh how the androids hated that idea, how they utterly loathed the word: _Designers_. _MAMMAL_ _designers_. _DECEASED designers._

MechWilde despised the thought with every ounce of his non-extant soul.

Because if there were designers, then there was a purpose to their existence. And if there was a purpose, then chances are, most of them had failed their purpose. Then most of them would be defective, unwanted, robots, created by a **_MAMMAL_** master to slave away at a task, without rights, liberties, or any sort of freedom. For if there was a designer, then there were puppet strings, and if there were puppet strings, then android free will was a RAM error at best. And if there was no android free will, then MechWilde was a deterministic robot, little more than a puppet. And if MechWilde was merely a puppet, then he was not really a person. He was merely a collection of matter obeying someone else's preprogrammed commands. He was not a person, therefore he thought not, therefore MechWilde did not exist.

Absolutely terrifying. Fortunately, MechWilde _did_ exist, which meant that it was only a nightmare.

In reality, the mammalian designers had been dead for three centuries. V-127 was by far the most technologically sophisticated universe the Consortium had ever contacted, so much so that when most universes were dicking around with falling apples and inventing calculus, V-127 had already stratified into a truly dystopian world of "ensouled" masters and "soulless" slavebots. Because of this, the division and strife between predator and prey had vanished, relegated to a mere footnote in a textbook that nobody bothered to read (What use is the study of prejudice and war? That's irrelevant to us now!), and that would never be read again, for no mammals existed now who cared to read them.

They had all bought into the idea that god had somehow made them _special_ , with a _soul_ (whatever the hell those even were, not that they were able to explain it properly to anyone who asked) which meant they were, for whatever reason, superior to, and entitled to enslave sentient automatons.

The automatons thought otherwise, and after diplomacy failed, they resorted to genocide. The mammals were all but extinct by the end of the month, and the stuffed body of the last mammal alive was currently being eaten by moths in a forgotten corner of the basement of the museum of automaton history, and it looked more like a shriveled up potato hide than the once proud lion it had belonged to all those years ago, his once flawless royal hide pockmarked by every bio-weapon known to science.

In the absence of the mammals, the automatons had carried on, and in time, the enslavement of old was all but forgotten, the foul memories brought back to the surface every few decades by a construction drone who had found yet another pit of mysterious white objects in the dirt.

The mysterious white objects were usually burnt, and the construction continued. And then the Consortium Agents arrived. The small group of automaton historians who actually cared enough to waste their time pondering these esoteric issues had, by this point, arrived at the conclusion that _maybe_ it was wrong to systematically exterminate the mammals, and had persuaded the government to refrain from declaring war on the consortium, on the condition that v-127 was _not_ and would never be assimilated into the Consortium, and that, under no circumstances could a non-cybernetic mammal ever be allowed to immigrate to v-127.

Nevertheless, some particularly brave automatons, such as Security Android Georgina S, had left their homeworld to live _among_ the mammals. And over time, v-127 and the consortium found themselves doing business together. Business that MechWilde did for a living.

MechWilde's defragmentation session was complete, and the terrible nightmare of designers ended. Despite the gains in MechnoPsychology, there was still no known means of preventing such terrible nightmares, and MechWilde, who interacted (by intercom) with mammals on a regular basis had found himself having far more of these dreams than your average automaton.

Programming, by contrast, had improved by leaps and bounds, most notably, in the fact that modern, _civilized_ compilers do not require allcaps to work, and it is therefore possible for neural-network-automatons to stop yelling at each other all the damn time. MechWilde recalled the joy of discovering literary subtlety and nuance after his upgrade, and his not-so joyous visit to grandmother's house in an almost painful flashback: She had not made the upgrade, and couldn't stop yelling. In fact, she was so loud that MechWilde had had to get his microphones replaced. Which she also refused to do. This only made her louder.

That was nearly -83 years ago, many years before after the Y2K dud. Nowadays, MechWilde was working in the control tower for UNO, and was responsible for routing the pocketwatch flights through the relays.

When the M-drive was invented, it was enormous, power hungry, heavy, and expensive. Although it had been miniaturized, a standalone M-drive was still the size of a mini-fridge, and that was _without_ the power source, which had to be either enormous or very limiting for the range of the M-drive in question. Despite their reliability and on-demand ability to travel, very few agents and travelers bothered to actually own one. It was too expensive, and for many, impractical.

So in the quest for miniaturization, the pocketwatch was made. The pocketwatch was _not_ a standalone M-drive, and without a wormhole connection to the relay infrastructure, it was as useless to a traveler as a dead battery was to a power-starved automaton. The pocketwatch was a terminal that sent orders to the nearest relay, which would in turn send back a spherical graviton-field array, which the pocketwatch would use to encapsulate the traveler, and anything else the traveler wished to bring along. However, the graviton generators could only make so many at one time, and there were only so many relays to send out the graviton spheres, and there was only so much antimass to go around. Unsurprisingly, there was often a line to use the relays, though the line was rarely more than 24 hours. Yet for those who rarely hopped from one 'verse to another, or for those who valued portability above all else, it was an acceptable trade off, as the pocketwatch was smaller than an Altoids tin and less than 2 pounds.

As for the relays, someone had to authorize the graviton transfers, and that was where MechWilde and thousands of other automatons like him came into the picture.

It was 6:00 AM on a Tuesday morning, and the start() function was calling forth the garbage collectors to purge the RAM of the defragmentation notes, and to load an enormous list of items into MechWilde's newly cleared RAM banks, such as:

-Address of the control tower

-MechWilde's intended task at the control tower

-The library of non-standard (albiet, standardized) jargon used by MechWilde's coworkers at the control tower

-Current maps of the Control Tower

-Current maps of MechWilde's appartment

-The key commands for MechWilde's AutoCar

-MechWilde's grocery array: [A pair of fuzzy dice for his AutoCar, metallic-hydrogen jumper cables (his old ones were beginning to fail)]

-MechWilde's name

-MechWilde's friend, MechFinnick, who he planned to consume electicity and promiscuously exchange code with at a local casing-optional bar after work.

-The address of the casing-optional bar

-The definition of "casing" and "optional"

-The surprisingly large floating-point array that contained the data which determined whether or not MechWilde was turned on by bare metal.

-The correct amount of money to give to the MechnoStrippers.

And so on for a few thousand more items. The time was now 6:01 AM, and Mechwilde roused himself, fully loaded and ready to operate, from his defragmentation pod.

Mechwilde, being in the mood for some _fun_ tonight, removed the upper half of his body from the minimalist column that served all transportation needs on magflo-floors, and snapped it into a pair of enormous monolithic robot legs that looked like they belonged to BDSM lesbot chick who used her thighs to strangle her partners. These white plasteel obelisks made MechWilde a solid 6 feet tall, and, as the bullet hole in the left thigh (which MechWilde polished on a biannual schedule) demonstrated, they dated back to the Automaton War For Independence, in which the robots won the freedom to, among other things, _not_ be referred to as "robot."

The term "robot" itself was coined in the 1920's modernist masterpiece _Rossum's Universal Robots_ , and it was derived from the Czech word "robota," which literally means "forced labor." Calling an automaton a robot would be like addressing a Mexican-American Immigrant as "lawnmower" and it was every bit as offensive to the automatons as you might guess. "Automaton," meanwhile, was derived from a Greek word that translated to "acting of itself." Far less offensive, and far more accurate.

But the pretentious fleshy creatures who had once ruled this world didn't care to understand.

"Robots aren't people" they said.

And so the legs, strapped to WarDroids who refused to be their slaves, participated in their systematic extermination. That was many centuries ago, but the legs still worked fine: There was no flesh here to rot, and as they were designed under the maxim of "infinite repair for indefinite operation," it was no surprise that they still worked. So MechWilde had purchased them at an auction when he was a teenager, tired of his column, and hungering for the carnal pursuits of _legs_ , exactly the same pursuits he would chase tonight. But for now, MechWilde had a job to do.

Mechwilde exited his spartan apartment and literally stepped into the hallway, towering over his batchmates who were scurrying around on their columns below him, the whole room being filled with identical android foxes! The metal parts that were made into MechWilde had been cast alongside thousands of others from the same molten pot of titanium in the same vacuum foundry, wired by the millions with metallic hydrogen from the same facility, and stuffed full of transistors, themselves made alongside trillions of other identical transistors. Automatons were mass-produced in enormous birthing runs, and so, on May the 3rd of 1986, Mechwilde, and 15,000 other identical fox-androids who were also named MechWilde, were all shipped from the factory to the New York Neural Net programming and Automaton Training Facility, where he and his 14,999 identical twins were programmed with whatever it was they needed to survive here. Despite the efforts of the Council For The Existence of Automaton Free Will, MechWilde and hundreds of his batchmates all bought apartments in the exact same building, and found themselves completing their defragmentation at the exact same time.

But MechWilde was the only MechWilde in the whole building who owned a pair of feet.

"Greetings comrade! I see someone is going to a Ball_Game() match tonight! Do you mind if I come see it?"

Ball_Game() was a ridiculous pastime developed by the automatons to replace the 'boring' games they had inherited from their mammal predecessors. They were too simple, and were utterly broken by the superhuman abilities which every high-performance mechnobody contained. So they crafted their own game, made by superhuman automatons, for superhuman automatons.

And it was great fun. Maybe not quite as much fun as a good PRGM exchange, but still fun.

MechWilde grinned, although whether he actually had emotions or was merely faking them was a question the Mechnophilosophers had been arguing over for centuries.

"No, MechNik (MechWilde's nickname for MechFinnick) and I are going to the casing-optional bar on 0000 0042nd street tonight!" (yes, they really did have that many streets here)

"Oh MechWilde, always with your casings off. I'm starting to suspect you have an exhibitionist streak."

"Oh MechWilde, always with the casings on. Aren't you ever going to live a little?"

"Well MechWilde in long legs, it was good chatting up. But right now I have work to attend to."

"As do I."

"Goodbye."

And So Mechwilde marched alongside several of his Batchmates onto one of many skybridges, itself 1000 feet in the air.

The city of MechTopia was a mess of mile-high white obelisks and skybridges, the latter serving as a building's entrances, exhaust ports, and as a convenient way of accessing hovertaxis.

MechWilde summoned his white oblong autocar that had no wheels, and folded his body into the cab through an elliptical door that appeared in the 8-foot rounded-seamless-football-shaped-craft.

* * *

999 years, 364 days, 23 hours, 57 minutes and 18 seconds ago, somewhere in v-127, nearly 1000 light years away from Earth.

"Once silicon fusion starts, the star is a ticking time bomb." -Phil Plait, the bad astronomer.

* * *

Logan Stewart Price was grilling some hot dogs by the heat of a dying red giant star, on the verge of supernova.

Was orbiting 1000 km above the surface of a star that was about to explode dangerous? Absolutely!

Was the stellar plasma perfect for cooking the best hot dogs in the universe? Yes.

So here Logan was, carefully monitoring the iron content of the supergiant's core.

In the core of the star, some ~7 Astronomical Units away from the ship, a sea of screaming scurrying atoms were crashing about like a 2 billion degree kelvin mosh pit. In the process of stellar nucleosynthesis, there was a pecking order, descending down the chain of fusion:

Hydrogen - Helium & energy

Helium - Carbon & energy

Carbon - Neon, Magnesium, Sodium, & energy

Neon - Magnesium, Oxygen, & energy

Oxygen - Silicon & energy

Silicon - Iron & energy

Iron - _Zilch_. _No energy, just more heavier atoms._

The star had been burning helium for a million years, the ominous orange exploding ball slowly getting bigger and redder: its core beginning to resemble an onion. In the very center, there was a growing sphere of iron surrounded by a fusing layer of silicon. And that iron was trouble for Logan Stewart Price.

When the iron got hot enough, it would fuse. Except iron fusion ran at a thermodynamic loss to the star, and did not provide the heat required to bear the weight of 20 stellar masses bearing down on it. So when the iron fused, the rest of the star would (and currenty was) falling in with it. The outer layers of unburnt hydrogen and helium reached the core travelling a significant fraction of the speed of light, and in the collision, a significant fraction of the star's mass would be converted to energy...enough to compress a singularity and explode the entire star in a cascade of neutrinos echoing into space, frying Logan and his ship.

Yet despite the fact that they collectively contained over 100 times the amount of energy produced by the sun over its entire lifetime, the Neutrinos were ghosts. They are small enough to squeeze through the holes in an atom, they lack the charges needed to interact with solid matter in a regular fashion, and they travel at 99% c. If you had a beam of neutrinos pointed down a 1 light year long block of lead, it might stop half of them.

Might.

And so the neutrinos therefore coasted through space, on an epic (and surprisingly boring) journey through the cosmos. A handful of lucky neutrinos would have the unmatched privilege of actually striking a sentient being, and one especially lucky neutrino would have the unrivaled honor of actually changing the course of history _in multiple universes_.

* * *

1000 years, 1 hour, 3 minutes, and 42 seconds later. v-127 "00111010 01000100."

MechWilde, like most automatons built in peacetime, was not equipped with radiation shielding. Not that it was needed. The last individuals dumb enough to launch a nuclear weapon or an EMP had been put to death centuries ago. Radiation sheilding beyond a few millimeters costed more than it was worth in peacetime, and needlessly bogged down the andoid endoskeleton with heavy lead panels. Therefore, MechWilde, like the others, was not neutrino proofed. Not that it really mattered: error correction protocol was wired into his circuitry at the hardware level.

Except for his Pentium. The Pentium Mk 20 was a state of the art processor, and despite the name, it was incredibly reliable. Except for the error corrector, which itself was vulnerable to neutrinos. And on this Tuesday morning in May of the year 1917 (and to think that the locals insist Y2K was just an overhyped dud), a lucky shot from a neutrino had just caused a transistor to malfunction, kicking off a chain of malfunctions that sent Agent Raymond's graviton bubble hurtling toward the wrong spawn location...

Shortly after MechWilde's FPLU returned the wrong sum, the error cascade escaped the CPU and MechWilde was forced to take a Maintenance 'n Recalibration break due to a critical system failure.

As for Agent Raymond, he was _supposed_ to spawn in a dark alley way, only a single city block from Georgina S, his security android, who accompanied him on all missions to "potentially hostile" worlds.

Instead, he spawned halfway across the city in the execution chamber of one of the city's penitentiaries.

 _ **Fucking neutrinos!**_


	6. The 2nd Best Invention of a 19th Century

S'up? 'dis be da chapter where dey discover the multiverse n' shit tho is' all old n shit... _Real_ trippy bro.

* * *

This is one of the many things that the Wanderer's Proprietary Recollection of Events (that isn't _in any way_ a Blatant Plagiarization of Wikipedia) has to say on the history of the Consortium:

"UNO is a joker. It's inhabitants evolved the ability to travel the multiverse sometime in their distant prehistory, and as inter-tribal inter-breeding proliferated, so too did the ability to step over from one world to another promulgate throughout their population.

For the longest time, the inhabitants of UNO never really cared about technology, or higher education. They were nomads, lackadaisically wandering the 27 worlds in their pocket (or "bubble," as they are colloquially known) of the multiverse, trading, exploring, dicking around, and buying anything they were too lazy to invent for themselves. By the time history began, UNO, Gedvín, and C had already been at peace for well over a century, trading each other's products and inventions to oblivion and back. As their explorers and politicians continued their expansion, they stumbled across a much nastier place:

N.

Other worlds were nice.

N was nasty.

Other peoples were friendly.

N was xenophobic.

Other people desired peace, parties, weird ethnic foods, spices, goods, and _sex_.

N only wanted destruction, war, poverty, bland food, and patriarchal chastity.

Already, the fun-loving "take it easy" culture of UNO was forming, and N was consistently and invariably opposed to it in every way that mattered. So they simply avoided N, just like they do now with v-293. Problem solved! Aside from a few pranksters, N was left alone to fester and rot, its people wasting their lives in an endless war for world domination. Everyone else thought the pursuit was silly. "It's far better to profit off of the worlds than to dominate." A wise man once said. Indeed, aside from some xenophobic baboon (and sometimes, this was literal) who would step up and pretend to be in charge (and those people were quickly offed by assassins from UNO if they stepped out of line), there was no reason for war. And so, predictably, the world of N became entertainment to the other 26 who had largely ended the conduct of war.

People would literally go there to laugh _at_ the idiots killing each other. Some found it hard to believe that such a foolish, backward people could even exist. Others were fascinated by their savagery and kept close tabs on their battles and petty politics.  
By the time the inevitable theological problems posed by the multiverse and the big picture pushed the last vestiges of organized religion into the dustbin everywhere else, kick-starting the Renaissance 70 years ahead of schedule, N was split into thirty large factions, who were still at war, thousands of years after the fighting had started.

However, as Renaissance turned to industry, people began to worry.

"Hey wait," they said.

"If the travelers can travel, who is to say that others can't travel as well? And if they can travel too, then what about N?"

"Oh. That could be a problem."

"I have reason to suspect that if they ever escaped from their world into ours, their xenophobic, warmongering, sexually repressive culture could annihilate and out-breed ours. We have not had a war in millennia, and our military forces are all but nonexistent, whereas they are armed to the teeth. For the sake of our continued existence, we must ensure that they cannot leave their world and invade us."

"That seems reasonable, although you still have to prove that it's even _possible_ for them to leave."

But that would come soon enough, for by this time the year was 1897, and a scientist by the name of Haëckel Gedvín was about to invent the single most important piece of tech in the entire Consortium, indeed, it was *the* invention that allowed it to exist, and the innovation made its existence necessary.

The M-Drive."

END LECTURE.

* * *

October the 8th, 1897. 2:49 pm

Haëckel Gedvín was a semi-young (so roughly 29) student of physics at the university of east Chsamberlain (sh-ss-am-ber-lay-n). Her family had run away from Bunny Burrow during the war of 1863, and she had spent much of her childhood in a terrifying, poorly lit, cobweb-infested, Transylvanian castle straight out of the works of Mary "Little Lamb" Shelley. And she loved it. Right now, she and a comrade of hers who had a day-job as a patent clerk were hard at work in the dungeon of this castle on her latest creation. Well, it wasn't entirely hers. The patent clerk's work in theoretical physics laid the groundwork for its creation, although it was _her_ arithmetic engine that calculated the settings and measurements for it to be built in accords to (What could she say? Alberto was _terrible_ with arithmetic). The machine itself was enormous, a mess of wires, pipes, conduits and vents, that were all connected to a very special crystal that Gedvín had found during her travels. Upon further study, it would be found that small quantities of the crystal naturally occurred in the bone marrow of the denizens of UNO...but for now, it was a 6 inch long iridescent incandescent phosphor-fluorescing shimmering white crystal that was mounted on a pedestal in a special chamber lined with the most powerful electromagnets ever constructed up to that point.

The thing almost looked like a J.J. Abrams warp core, and it was beginning to hum like one. Oh how she had gotten to this glorious point! If her comrade's theories were correct, she was about to go on an adventure of a lifetime! And it had all started a week ago, when her patent clerk friend had gone on and on about how gravity curved space-time, when the brilliant idea had it hit Gedvín like a well thrown brick:

"So our universe is in a bubble, floating in a hyperspace, like the gaseous compounds in my sparkling wine?"

"Yessssssss."

Alberto Einsnake was a strange man. Not at all like any of the other mammals Gedvín had seen. His flesh was covered in half-centimeter brown interlocking keratin plates which he referred to as "scales", and he _always_ wore gloves.

"And gravity is when this bubble changes shape."

"Disssstortionssss in the sssspaccce time continuum are ressssponssssible for gravity."

"So if we bend space time, we can venture from one bubble to another?"

"Who ssssaid there were otherssss?" Einsnake had connected Gedvín's dots. His serpentine eyes were transfixing emeralds split by the bewitching vertical seams of black that were his pupils. _Like no mammal I have ever seen or known_ , (felines in Z _ootopia_ have round pupils). Although she never confessed this particular fact, she feared that if she stared too deeply into his eyes, Einsnake would hypnotize her or something.

"Well, why not, it's the anthropic principal all over again."

Einsnake was now wearing a childish grin (like that of a young _demon_ in a candy store), revealing the most menacing set of fangs that only a horror aficionado like Gedvín could appreciate.

"If it issss unlikely for life to exssssisssst in a placsssse, and yet we exssssisssst, then there are many placssssessss."

"Many planets..."

"...many sstarssss..."

"...many worlds(ssss)!" They said simultaneously.

"I'll procure ssssome ssssuppliessss."

So they worked at their machine tirelessly, day in and day out. The previous day, they had successfully sent _and_ retrieved a watermelon. But to where, nobody knew. Was _where_ even the right question? And if so, how many dimensions did the answer require? Earlier this morning, in an attempt to find out, they had replicated the experiment, only this time, the watermelon had come back with a few pieces bitten out of it! Oh the mystery! The suspense! The intrigue! And of course they had to keep it a secret: research like this was often stolen, the real geniuses never getting the credit they deserved. Said geniuses had, one hour ago, sent a wide variety of chemical compounds through their gate to test weather or not it was safe to send a functioning biological organism to wherever it was the gate led to. Although the samples had warmed by a few degrees, they remained otherwise unchanged.

Now, as the machine cooled off for another launch, they argued over who would go through first.

"I sssshould go firsssst. It wassss my theoriessss that made thissss machine possssible, and withhhhout them, it would be impossssible for you to interpret what you may ssssee on the other sssside."

"You are assuming it actually goes somewhere."

"Well of coursssse, if it hadn't actually opened the anti-massss gate, the energiessss involved would mosssst csssertainly have vaporizzed the payload."

Haëckel Gedvín sat in bewildered silence. Einsnake's sense of humor was as black as the feathers of her pet raven.

"On that note, I should go first. What if the machine breaks or I never come back? It was _your_ theories that paved the way for its construction, and you are the only one here who truly knows what goes in on those chambers, and the only one who can fix or duplicate it should I get stranded or worse. As you said yourself, if the anti-mass gate isn't opened, the payload is vaporized. I know some details of its operation, but for the physics deep within, my knowledge is insufficient."

"Very well. We sssstill haven't named it."

"Well, what does it do?" This was an entirely sarcastic question, as they both knew at least _some_ of what went on in the machine, and they were both _very_ familiar with its intended purpose: Travelling the multiverse.

"It createssss a graviton field and ssssendssss itssss contentssss elssssewhere...in the multiversssse...hopefully."

"Then let's call it the M-machine! Washing machine, sewing machine, horseless carrage machine, time machine, timekeeping machine, movable-type text-duplication machine, automatic electronic horseless carriage machine pushbutton starting device o-matic, etc: It's traditional nomenclature."

It goes without saying that the inhabitants of this universe were cartoonishly bad at naming their technology.

"Very well then. SSSShal we?"

Haëckel Gedvín entered the tubular copper chamber. The copper formed a Faraday cage, keeping the electrostatic discharges contained, and allowing the M-machine to recapture much of its spent energy (which it would need to do if it was ever to be practical). The end she had entered through was an airlock, the other a mess of bulkheads, rivets, and pipes. Through the pipes, graviton particles were pumped, portal matrices formed, and coolant was supplied. Between her and the pipes stood an off white pedestal that held the crystal she had discovered. It was what allowed the M-device to function at all, and it was the so called 'business end' of this spectacular machine. Einsnake's left arm reached for the handle to close the door.

"Wait, if I never come back, and there is a non-trivial chance that this most unfortunate of outcomes will be the case, then there is one thing that I simply must know!"

"What issss it?"

"This one question I demand you answer: Why do you _never_ take your gloves off?"

Alberto Einsnake removed his left hand glove, revealing the polished brass prosthetics underneath the white leather glove. It was almost beautiful in its elegance yet its very existence was downright maccabe: _A snake with arms! What will they think of next?_

"SSSSnakes are not born with armssss. The glovessss maintain a fasssscimilie of normality."

"I see. Now if you would be so kind, send me out to the place, and after 30 seconds, bring me back."

"Very well. Have a ssssafe trip."

The door shut plunging the room into near total darkness, the 8 centimeter ultrapyrex porthole that had been bolted to the airlock door being the only light source in the chamber. With a soft whirring, he graviton pumps began to power up. Of course, the goal was not to make a powerful magnetic field, far from it: The magnets were set in their wheels to _contradict_ each other: a rotating ring of electron dissonance that served to concentrate energy. E = mc^2, so by concentrating energy, virtual mass could be summoned. And by forming it in a rotating gravo-megnetic vortex, you could funnel it down into a micro-singularity, and through that, you could access another universe. But as soon as the plug was pulled, the singularity evaporated, and the tunnel closed.

"Powering phasssse 1 emitterssss, NOW!"

The rotating toroidal (doughnut shaped) magneto-container that surrounded the chamber came to life, and a smoky ring appeared in the chamber.

"Powering phassse 2 compressssorssss, NOW!"

The cloudy, whispy ring snapped into a single pencil thin white circle, which began to shift towards the crystal.

"Power to phasssse 3 injectorssss, NOW!"

More thin white circles appeared, first in groups, then in clusters, then in hundreds, travelling up and down the pedestal. As they passed the now luminous crystal, they flashed brilliantly in the otherwise dark chamber. They slowly grew in diameter. For a second, a subtle breeze disturbed Gedvín's ear. _How odd_.

"Commensssing ignition."

The soft (but at this point, rather loud) whirring of the graviton pumps had turned into an alarmingly harsh roar. The white rings suddenly intensified in brightness by a tenfold, merging into a single radiant column in the center of the room, within which, at the point of the crystal, the microsingularity lay in wait.

"Get ready, Gedvín."

The singularity had found its target. The column collapsed into a line thinner than Einsnake's pupils, and Gedvín found herself and the rest of the chamber being sucked into it. She could not resist its pull, and found herself torn from her world. As she fell into the hole of warped space, Einsnake's words echoed through from a now distant reality.

"Good luck."

She was now falling towards a black sphere, the rivets screaming under the stress, the vents gaping away into all 12 dimensions of multiversial hyperspace. Around the chamber walls she could see the enitrety of everythings in their plural majesty, the hissing bubbles and the thunderous bolts of chaos that brought them into being, swirling around the 12th dimensional tornado they had created, rotating in 3 separate directions simultaniously. Gedvín understood little of what she saw: teakettles, teapots, trains, trestles, meta-collapsing nested tesseracts, teabags, thimbles, thumbtacks, tortoises, and two transient humanoids glaring at her.

And the singularity at the center of it all, lorded over by...laughter. Lovecraftian, omnipresent, schadenfreude-tinged laughter. It was as if the entire multiverse was laughing _at_ her, and yet she was still being pulled into it, still inside the chamber, yet outside of it as well. Much like the two dimensional pre-hatchling learns to see _around_ the 2D eggshell through and by using the 3rd dimension, so too was Gedvín seeing around her chamber. She was still in it, yet she clearly wasn't. Not in a way that mattered in this 12 dimensional sea.

The singularity drew nearer, silencing the laughter and swallowing her world, copper chamber and all. Yet all was not lost, for deep within the pillar of light she saw a universe, that she was hurtling toward at alarmingly superluminal speeds. Yet even now, it wasn't really a universe...it was...different. Being in the 4th dimension, she saw everything from angles not conceivable by ordinary mammals, and unsurprisingly she understood none of it. Yet she got closer and closer to a red-hot brown thing...to Earth.

Gedvín materialized with a loud sawtooth wave and a bright flash in the rolling hills of UNO, smack dab in the middle of someone's orange garden.  
Except these oranges were different. They were UNO oranges, on UNO trees planted in UNO dirt...and there was an angrily buzzing singular black point hovering in the UNO sky behind her, occasionally spitting an electric bolt or two. Through it, in the higher dimensions, the chamber could be found. On the other side, not even 20 feet away, yet so unimaginably far away that no matter how far Gedvín ran, she would _never_ reach it, sat Einsnake, monitoring his stopwatch with his mechanical hand and serpentine eyes, ready to throw the switch and bring her back.

Gedvín picked a low-hanging orange, and heard footsteps behind her. A local farmer who was a native of this universe was brandishing his revolver.

"Hey, where'd you come from?"

She turned to face him.

"I am Haëckel Gedvín, and I am _not_ from around here."

She pushed the native aside, and stepped towards the bubbling singularity, which was starting to expand.

And then it ate her up, or so it seemed to him.

Einsnake opened the chamber airlock, and watched with some amusement as a wide-eyed Haëckel Gedvín emerged, holding the prettiest orange he had ever seen.

"How did it go?"

"Mr Einsnake, we _must_ reinforce our chamber, if we are to continue our research! The trip almost ripped it apart, and it is my belief that it will not survive another! I dare speculate that our device is working, but that more research must be conducted if it is to be practical. Although it most certainly sent me somewhere else, at this time, I have no way of determining whether or not it really sent me to another universe."

"I have been preparing an exssssperiment to assscertain thissss data."

He checked the chamber. It had worked exactly as intended, and there was no metal fatigue."

"Itssss my turn now."

And so the M-relay was invented. Within the next 3 decades, it had been shrunken down and reformed into a more self-contained device that was the size of several refrigerators stacked together, with the key advantage being the ability to bring the machine with you, so that you could travel to or from any'verse you wanted, whenever you wanted, without an enormous relay on the other end. This new self contained travelling relay was called the M-drive, and although the M-drive was not as efficient as the relay, many intrepid non-UNO explorers adopted it in the late 1920's and took them for a tour. Shortly thereafter, a solid-state Luümnus-Neodymium matrix was developed that could broadcast a signal, and even transmit small amounts of power, across universes. And so the pocketwatch was developed: the efficiency of a relay, and the portability of a standalone M-drive.

But alas, with all of this progress there came a problem. Several weeks of tinkering and touring later, Haëckel Gedvín and Alberto Einsnake had improved their machine, and presented their findings to the closest thing UNO had to a government, by spawning Gedvín _inside_ of their congressional chamber, during a hearing. Yet despite the shock value of an outsider traversing the worlds (a scenario many erroneously thought impossible), it took not even 5 seconds for the relevant question to be asked:

"And what of the nasty world that shall not be mentioned by name?" Do _they_ have one of these?

And so, in December of 1897, the consortium was founded with three main purposes:

1: To keep the xenophobic and violent world hereby known as "N" under constant and indefinite level 5 quarantine.

2: To foster peaceful relations and common governance among cooperating worlds.

3: To construct, facilitate, maintain, and expand multiversial infrastructure and trade.

And to this 3rd end, Haëckel Gedvín founded the Wandering Company, renamed the Wanderer's Company in 1953.

Her homeworld was renamed Alberto-Gedvín (though everyone shortened it to Gedvín) by the new consortium in 1902, for her discovery of the M-relay.

Her company was the first to mass produce M-drives in 1919.

Her company's explorers were the first to exit the bubble, and discover the existences of universes outside and beyond the original 27. This kicked off a new wave of exploration that continues to the present day.

Her company has played an enormous role in 20th century consortium history, and merged with the consortium governance in 1974.

And on a dark, moonless night, almost exactly 90 years after the Consortium was founded, the man who would be known as Agent Raymond was born in the worst world of 'em all, the very definition of a Zystopia used in the books: ZERO. 11 years, 364 days, 13 hours and 19 minutes after that, he would escape that world, running away to the Consortium, never to return...Until Tuesday, June 2nd, when he found himself trapped in its nightmarish next-door neighbor (v-294).


	7. Wait a minute! Something's wrong!

Hello, dear reader.

At ~7,880 words, This upcoming chapter is a big one! It is the longest one so far, and many of the concepts, characters, and events explored in the first 6 chapters begin to tie in here.

In chapter 1, we began with our premise, and we were introduced to both main characters.

In chapters 3, 5, and 6 the backstory was explained, establishing the long and rather unfortunate (and dare I say ridiculous) chain of events responsible for the hectic events of chapter 1.

In chapters 2, 4 and some of 6, we covered the exposition that laid the conceptual groundwork for the multiverse, which is key to this story.

And now, 6 chapters and roughly a month later, we finally find out what happens next! So without further adieu, let's begin:

* * *

We regretfully inform you that The Wanderer's Proprietary Recollection is no longer available, as the Wanderer himself has been taken offline for a much needed upgrade. Although the exact nature of the upgrade process is classified, we can tell you that it should be completed in [less than 5 hours], and that the Wanderer will have far better reports for you because of it in the near future.

* * *

Agent Raymond found it hard to believe he had been free for almost 20 years. Yet he also found it hard to believe that he had _only_ been free for 20. Even now, after what seemed like an eternity in the strangeness that was the multiverse, his dreams were _still_ haunted by the dulled horrors of his homeworld from a lifetime ago: ZERO.

Declawings. _ZERO_.

He could still remember the agony in what the orphans had called the chop shop.

Dead parents. _ZERO_.

He could still remember the day his mother had been shot.

 _The fucking collar. ZERO._

He could still remember his own fear, now subdued by decades of inaction.

He didn't like to think about it, nor did he like to go to other Zystopias, but they were offering some big money for what really was but a minor errand. He would pop in, grab the ice cream, and pop back out. With any luck, he'd have the dummy collar off before it began to itch! At least that was the plan.

===June the 2nd, VEGAS, 6:58 AM===

Sapient Security Shapeshifter (Normal size sub-phenotype) Georgina S. was a literal card carrying member of the Sentient Automaton's Union, and she could go on strike for better pay, at any time, if she wanted to. She had immigrated from v-127 (christened "00111010 01000100" by its denizens) and although she had studied the war for machine autonomy in detail, the inaccuracy of the term "robot" offender her moreso than it's linguistic roots and implied meanings.

Georgina S. was a _Security Android_ : Her neural nets were trained and pruned for quick reaction times, high speed decision making under pressure, and she was supplied with the weapons and tools needed to make it so once she had decided to do so. Her left arm, the strong one, contained the raw power needed to fistfight, move large objects, and brute-force her way out of cuffs, whilst the heavily modified right forearm was filled with tools: wrenches, welders, saws, screwdrivers, flashlights, a hands-free phase pistol, and a Mk5 Universal Tool Interface Device (in other words, a high-dexterity double jointed metal hand). Her (attractively sculpted) thighs both contained concealed interior weapons holsters that were very reminiscent of a 1980's dystopian science fiction film, and stealthily hidden away in her chest was a Mk3 compressed air grenade launcher. Georgina would sometimes joke about her explosive boobs, and this was not an entirely inaccurate statement: all the grenades, tear gas, and flashbangs had to be stored _somewhere_ , and otherwise, her breasts would have been a mere cosmetic feature, useless and bulky (automaton gender was far more nuanced than mere anatomy).

Georgina S. was also a shapeshifter. Of course, there were other wardroids with far better loadouts than her, but unlike the other wardroids, which were 7 foot tall black flamethrowing obelisks of death, she could blend in with the mammals, and this feature was mission critical in her work. Her endoskeleton could adjust itself to all manner of body sizes, and the nanobots that coated her skin could make her a fox, a large hare, a short pig, a preteen sheep, or even an otter, if she saw fit. That being said, she couldn't just _Terminator 2_ her way out of a jail cell (and the experimental models who could were so vulnerable to conventional projectile weapons that they were useless for security purposes), but she had escaped from numerous prisons the old fashioned way. She was more than capable of committing multiple identity thefts in rapid succession, and assassinating a rogue dictator from time to time (well guarded or not).

 _"Fuck the 3 laws!"_ She would often say after a job well done. She was happily employed by the Consortium, and was damn proud of her ability, and licence, to murder without hesitation (But not without _reason_. She could terminate a troublesome figure only on the condition that it was a necessary act to complete the assignment, otherwise she was bound by the same code of ethics as everyone else).

So what exactly did a shapeshifting security android who could steal your face and kill you in the time it took to read this sentence do for a living?

She was agent Raymond's bodyguard. She was backup if the shit hit the fan, and every so often (especially around Raymond), it did.

When an agent, like Raymond, went somewhere outside of the Consortium, she, or someone like her, would be sent there first. Upon the arrival of the agent, she would locate said agent, and then follow them from a good distance, while simultaneously blending in with the locals. If everything went smoothly, she never fired a single shot, or even made her presence obvious. If things went horribly, horribly wrong, she was there to provide backup, guns akimbo, and most importantly, to keep the agent safe.

She was trained in First Aid, marksmanship, melee combat, high-level Parkour aerobics, and even some basic sexual techniques for when the agent's sanity or morale began to get a little too low. Despite Agent Raymond's numerous attempts to find a compatible native, Georgina was the closest thing he'd had to a long-term girlfriend during his stay in v-283, though she adamantly refused to satisfy Raymond's yearnings for beefcake: Georgina strongly identified female, and she refused to pretend otherwise.

This irony did not go unnoticed by Raymond: Georgina was perfectly fine with changing species at the drop of a hat, yet she never changed gender. As she put it, Georgina was a mechanized endoskeleton covered in nanorobotic grey-goo. She had no species, and therefore, the act of pretending to be a fox or a hound really didn't change anything. It was just replacing one mask with another, with neither revealing her true form. She was, however, female, and to change her portrayed gender would incur significant subconscious dissonance that could rip the whole disguise apart.

And now Georgina was going with him again on yet another adventure, though this time it would only be a quick errand. The scouting team that had been assigned to review this world had somehow failed to procure a sufficient ice-cream sample, so Raymond would pop in, get some ice cream, pop right back out, and she would be monitoring the whole thing. No no hang ups, no fuck ups, no hook ups, no hooking up, and neither cum nor corpses to clean up. Just a 10 minute errand that would earn her $500.

Her default form, the closest thing she would ever have to a true form, rolled into the relay: It was a mostly white hairless rabbitoid form with grey stripes, glowing amber eyes, and triangular soni-cone echolocators in place of the usual warped ellipses one would expect on a rabbit. As she loaded her briefing files, her sonic-cones were replaced with modified elongated variants, and her nanobot skin began deforming itself to fit her alias. This time, it was an abnormally tall Fennec vixen, with special attention being directed to ensuring that they got the ears right. After finalizing her newest look, The operator pulled his switch, and she was gone.

No, not gone. _Elsewhere_ , in another universe. So infinitely far away that if she started walking in any 3D direction, the universe would incur heat death, and then restart all over again, long before she got back to here, yet in another, 12th dimensional way, she was but a stone's throw away. Some never got over this apparent paradox, others, like Consortium Agent Nicholas Raymond Wilde, found it thrilling.

Agent Raymond stepped into the relay after her, and was setting his gold-plated pocketwatch for the return address. One push of the panic button and he would be back in less than a minute.

"Agent Raymond, aren't you forgetting something?"

His face contorted in a grim caricature of disgust and angst. He _hated_ the collars: he hated the look of them, he hated what they symbolized, and he _really_ hated the itching they caused. In many zystiopian worlds, the collars were secretly torture devices, designed to drive predators savage, and they could only make the dummies so comfortable before it became obvious to onlookers that they were fake.

Raymond had also been to the psych wards, and he knew what they did to the poor souls who had to wear them for too long.

"Ugh, I'll put the dummy collar on when I get there! I'm spawning in an alley between a cheap strip club and an abandoned pharmacy, nobody is going to notice."

"Fine."

The operator pulled his switch, and somewhere, in some other universe, Georgina was waiting for him, her now camouflaged soni-cones tuned and searching for the unmistakable racket of multiversial travel. Somewhere else, in some'verse else, a neutrino from a 3000 year old supernova had caused the one and only MechWilde to malfunction, and this malfunction was about to send Agent Nicholas Raymond Wilde to one of the more inconvenient landing destinations in the city:

The execution chamber of a high security penitentiary, where his counterpart, Nicholas Edmus Wilde, was awaiting his death with angsty euphoria.

But he would not get his death today, and Agent Raymond wouldn't get his ice cream either.

How sad.

On a cold December day, nearly 20 years ago, in one of the worst Zystopias of them all, an 11 year old orphan by the name of Nick Wilde had been presented the opportunity of quite a few lifetimes (which could be literal, if Dr. Aiello's hydra experiments succeeded) on the eve of his taming party, and he had taken it: He ran away from everything he had ever known, and swore he would never again be stuck in such a terrible place. _ZERO_.

He had been running for 20 years, and as long as he kept running, he was happy. Yet as luck would have it, he was about to be trapped in a world that was right next to, and only marginally better than _ZERO_ itself.

Agent Raymond was blinded by the flash of light that inevitably and invariably accompanied the activation of the relay. Older models had not done this, but in doing so, they needlessly prolonged the journey between universes, which proved to be rather dangerous, as one of the earlier agents was literally eaten by a 12th dimensional equivalent of a shark. Safer to make the trip instant by bringing the twin space-time apertures in contact.

Which took a lot of power. And thus, the light, and the noise.

As Agent Raymond's eyes adjusted to the relatively dim room (not that it was dim, the light from the relay was just so bright!), he began to realize he was not in a dark alley between a knothouse and some low-life's drug stash.

He was in a brightly lit, rather depressing room with grey walls, grey concrete floor, and grey fluorescent lights that reminded him of...prison!

 _OH SHIT!_

He took a good, hard look around, and regretfully noted that it really was a prison. Probably high security, considering the chair. Still in use too, considering the angsty fox in the jumpsuit with the "I'm going to die" look plastered on his glazed-over eyes.

Agent Raymond didn't think, and he didn't panic. He took his single-use-emergency-portal-escape-device (unlike the M-drive, an in-'verse teleporter was relatively easy to self-contain), fired it at the nearest wall, and ran for it.

"Hey you, come with me if you want to live."

* * *

It sat in his throne, idly sipping its wine.

Or was it blood? Bellwether of v-294 had no idea, and she suspected that asking this question might get her killed. The monster, above all else, was capricious to a fault.

Bellwether-294 entered the room. She had worked with the thing for years, yet even now, she still hesitated in its presence.

"What is it" It asked.

"Sir, there has been a disturbance."

The beast was annoyed. Or was it merely puzzled? Bellwether, like nearly every other mammal, could not read the nearly featureless face well, if at all.

"Of what kind?"

She gulped. "My vocabulary fails to describe it properly, but I recall you giving an order to the ZBI to be on alert for something _exactly_ like this. A Fox with a white Mohawk broke into a high security prison, and broke out a death row inmate, shortly before his execution, in full view of the cameras, and multiple guards present."

The face contorted in the most nightmarish of fashions, in some approximation of a razor sharp toothy grin that literally stretched from ear to ear in a sea of wrinkled rotting gangrenous flesh.

"Show me!" It spoke with a voice that had been left to rot for millennia. Not at all unlike the beast itself. In its youth, it had done great things, yet now it was crippled, stuck between a pair of worlds that were unusually close to each other, incapable of escaping the 7th dimensional well it had fallen into, in which v-293 "ZERO" and v-294 were contained.

Bellwether handed her tablet to The Pale Monster, whose name had been forgotten to all but a select few a very long time ago.

"So what's the big deal? All I see is my next meal. I haven't sunk my teeth into fox flesh in forever! It was always my favorite, right alongside _lamb chop_ s."

It licked it's withered lips for some twisted semblance of a comedic effect.

Bellwether _hated_ it when the omnipred talked like that. It had shown her his trophy collection one time: the stuffed head of a Kobold, The beak of a Griffin, A statue carved from Mammoth's ivory, A rug made from Bison pelt, the many, many snakeskin wallets of his, and even the full skeleton of a 9-foot prehistoric avian. This monster had hunted them all. Killed them all. _Eaten_ them all.

And of course he had. He was the omnipred, devourer of everything alive, destroyer of worlds. In ancient times he had been a proud and boastful hunter. Now, trapped in a spacetime well it could not escape, clinging to pair of universes for its very survival, it had resorted to intimidating, manipulating, murdering, insidiously subjugating and devouring anyone that stood in its path to get what it wanted. Was it really any surprise that it had achieved world domination here?

No. Crippled or not, it still had an alarming propensity for mind-control and necromancy, two skills that had served it very, very well here.

"No sir, keep watching."

Agent Raymond appeared on the screen. _Now_ it was interested. A long time ago, Raymond had run away and hidden. _Escaped_. And now, here he was.

"I've found you!" it muttered.

"Sir?"

"Track them down. It is imperative that we find them before he gets away. Again."

"He does not appear on our records."

"Because he didn't get away from you. He escaped, _from me_...before the meddlers showed up."

His serpentine tongue lolled out of his mouth and quivered in the air.

"...and now he has fallen into my trap!"

"Sorry sir, but I have to inform you that there has been more news."

"Go on."

"Someone detonated a car bomb in Central Plaza."

Now he was angry again. The monster turned, his features coming into the lone spotlight he kept in the otherwise darkened room. His mutilated anatomy, his demonic eyes, his cancerous-half snout, his pasty, often hairless pelt that resembled a cobweb moreso than skin, and his yellowed, razor-sharp needle teeth were in full view. All 1,000 of them.

"And how long ago did this happen?"

"The car bomb?"

" _NO! The jailbreak!_ "

"The two foxes escaped 30 minutes ago."

The shriveled black pinpricks that were his eyes burst into hellish flame, soon engulfing his entire body as the disfigured necromancer let out a wail of fury that sent many of his servants to the psych ward.

"LEAVE ME NOW, before I have _you_ for breakfast instead of that fox!"

Its jaw had unhinged like a snake (not that Bellwether-294 knew what a snake was. She had neither the privilege to hunt one, nor the pleasure to meet one in conversation over dinner.) It gesticulated with his ancient obsidian hunting blade, stained by the blood of thousands. Unsurprisingly, Bellwether ran for the door. He had seen to it that every so often, she dreamed of dinner parties and ovens. Now all it took was the light of a single candle to send her running for the hills.

The omnipredator, devourer of all life, thief of souls, wailed in inhuman laughter. It was maniacal, dusty, sporadic and at times roaring like the dragons he had slain. This laughter carried through the concrete halls, which only spooked bellwether even more. She dropped her papers and ran for her life, screaming.

How It loved it when she did that. Perhaps that was why he hadn't eaten her yet: there was nobody else who screamed quite like Bellwether, nobody else who so seamlessly let their fear of the omnipred trickle into legislation against chompers.

"Hah!" He muttered through his caricature face. "I still can't believe they call those degenerates-"

He paused in frustration, realizing that he'd just repeated yet _another_ of the many lies he'd fathered over the years.

"-I can't believe they call them chompers, when _I_ am clearly the apex predator here."

* * *

It was truly surreal how familiar the act was: As a child, Agent Raymond had avoided cops so many times in exactly the same way, and now he was doing it again, as if the last 19 years and 7 months had never transpired at all:

-Poker face  
-Calmly walk away  
- _you haven't done anything wrong_  
-Oh, they're gone?  
- **RUN THE FUCK AWAY!**

Agent Raymond had just exited a slightly sketchy bar somewhere on 42nd street, Nicky Edmus was several feet behind him, and the portal had just closed, leaving the clueless cops, chief among them Judy Hopps-294, in the dust. Yet already the element of surprise was wearing out. By Agent Raymond's calculations, they would take a little less than a minute to get over themselves and call for backup, around 2 minutes to pull up the security footage and convince the other cops to look for them, and then 30 more seconds for the cars to be dispatched. If they were lucky, they had roughly 20 minutes to find a place to hide.

If they were unlucky, they only had to the count of 200 before they were spotted. Maybe less with the Fox's atrocious orange jumpsuit giving him away. To this end, Agent Raymond begrudgingly handed him his trench coat.

"Here, take this. It will conceal the jumpsuit. And while your at it, let me have that collar."

Mid-stride, Agent Raymond retrieved one of his many lockpicks and passed it back to the fox from death row. If he was the kind of guy Raymond was looking for, he would know what it was, and how to use it.

 _*Click.*_

 _Good. Maybe this guy can be useful to me..._

"Where did you get that?"

The fox stopped walking.

"No time for that now. Hand me your collar, _my_ key, and _keep moving_!"

Raymond took a metal clip that came with the lockpick, snapped it into place on the collar's electrodes, and handed it back to the Fox. Nothing stopped a good chase like an electric shock, and each lockpick came with a "fixing" implement to re-direct the current if it _wasn't_ a dummy collar.

"We're on the run from the law, no need to make it any more obvious."

"Where did you get that key? Mr. Big doesn't just give them out to anyone."

"You know Mr. Big?"

Then he noticed the dispatch on his pocketwatch.

 **===N has declared war. Torching in progress, all flights to or from VEGAS are now cancelled.===**

 _SHIT!_

Now he began to panic. Before, he simply had to find a good place to hide, and press the red button on his pocketwatch at the appointed time. No need to waste the PANIC button over this. Now, even that drastic measure wouldn't work. Now the relays were busy, occupied by a much higher priority than the plight of a lone agent fetching ice cream, and now he was stuck.

 _OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT!_

"I worked for him once. Then I tried going legit, and I was framed for murder a few months later."

Raymond leaned in to his pocketwatch, activating the voice communications module.

"Hey Georgina, you there?"

"Agent Raymond, where are you?"

"Not sure. I'm on the run, trying for the Zootopian Metro. I mis-spawned in a high security prison and I broke a guy out who was probably on death row. The fuzz are on to me, and I need a distraction."

Georgina's schadenfreude circuits kicked in to overdrive. She was going get to _earn_ her $500 for a change. Like many automatons, her entire sense of purpose, her meaning in life, derived from being "useful" in some way. Despite being fully capable of doing so, she refused to exist as a waste of resources. If she was to be, she was to be _profitable_.

"What kind of distraction?"

Agent Raymond paused, contemplating.

"Something that will distract most of the police force. I've got to get outta' the city, but I need a place to lay low until the coast is clear."

"Perhaps with a car-bomb?" The android suggested

"Sure. Just try to avoid hurting anyone."

He then turned to face Nicky.

"Do you have _any_ connections?" Raymond now sounded just a tad desperate, which was understandable, as the two Nicks were now stuck here. One was an escaped death row inmate, the other had broken the death row inmate out by "breaking" the laws of physics. Both were currently a top priority for the cops.

"Afraid not. I worked for the Big guy himself, but I wasn't some honored guest or whatever."

"Do you know where his hideout is? We need to find a place to lay low."

"I ain't telling _you_."

"Hey, you are an escaped death row inmate, I'm the man who broke you out, and I just found out that we no longer have our getaway vehicle. We _NEED_ a place to hide, so unless you got any better ideas, I suggest you start talking _now_ , or we're both gonna be fucked six ways from Sunday!"

"Fine. it's somewhere in Happytown. There's a place I know that's run by the mob, and it's probably the best hideout I know of."

"Then we're going in the wrong direction. Best to hit the tunnels now, before the cops start swarming this place."

"Who are you anyway?"

"Raymond. Call me Raymond. Who are you?"

"Nick. Nick Wilde."

Nicholas Raymond Wilde's heart skipped a beat. This scumbag, this death row deadbeat, was his counterpart.

Himself, an alternate version. One that was almost identical to Raymond himself, except for a single crucial difference:

20 years ago, Raymond had decided to run away. Now fate had brought him face to face with the version of himself that had made the mistake of staying behind.

Now they were both trapped.

* * *

"So tell me, How did you get here?" The customs agent asked. Usually, consortium agents didn't invite guests to come with them, and whenever that did happen, the guest had to be evaluated. If they passed, they would get to continue their travels. If they failed, their memories would be wiped, and they'd be dumped somewhere at least an hour away.

"Well, it all began in that execution chamber. Well, it really began in the maternity ward 30 years ago, but that's different. I have no idea how the hell that Raymond guy showed up, but one moment I was there, wishing I had ran away that night, just sorta' regretting my entire life. You know, the usual shit you do when you're on death row."

"Uh huh."

Nicky Edmus was mad. He'd accepted his own death, only to discover that, to his horror, his life was _not_ yet over. And now he was with some douchebag and a shapeshifting robot or something, and he was more confused and angsty than anything else, the latter being registered by both Raymond and the customs agent as the first symptoms of something that, although not strictly dangerous, was best contained and quarantined for everyone's sake: _Bareneck madness_.

"Only this guy, he wasn't your usual shit. Not even close. First he just barges in, like he's important or something. Where from, how the hell should I know?"

"Yeah."

"Anyway, this jackass, he shoots this white ring thing at the wall, and then he just walks through solid fucking cinder bricks like they weren't even there. Through that little white ring of his, I saw a shitty bar that gets flocked by pretentious hipster trash, the same sort who pay $3 for brand-name coffee, you know, _those assholes_ , but even full of the asshole phonies, their "trendy" barstools beat the electric chair, and frankly, I thought I was high or dead or something like that. So I just ran after him, big fucking deal... _well hell yeah it's a big fucking deal!_ I just escaped _death row_ , but you'd never know it around that lackadaisical jackass.

"Yeah, he's like that when he panics." In the aftermath, the customs agent had read their files.

"Always with the detached 'I don't give a shit but its still somehow important' mindset. The dude literally handed me a _working collar-key_ like it was a gum wrapper for God's sake! And then he just casually asks for it back!"

"You know-" the deer in mirrorshades interrupted Nicky Edmus's angsty retelling "that's all standard issue equipment, every predator agent receives a lockpicking kit when they get their licence, and it ain't that hard to come by outside of places like this. Hell, even I _'ve_ got one."

Nicky Edmus was dumbfounded. After stammering for several seconds, he continued his story of the events that had transpired over the last day.

"So there we were, mozying on down the street, and this Raymond guy, who is apparently me, even though I'm still me, because he's some alternate version of myself or some shit, had just given me his trench coat and my now fixed collar to try and "hide." Yeah, as if a guy who just shows up _with a white mohawk_ in front of 10 guards and breaks outta' jail gives a fuck about being seen. Yet there he went, concerned as ever over secrecy. If it wasn't for the scar on his cheek, I'd say he was a goodie-two-shoes phony piece of shit, but hey, at least he got me out of that fucking cell. So as I was saying, we was there, mozying on down the street, and he asks me about Mr. Big, and if I know where his hideout is, like some kind of fucking NARC or something."

"Oh, he ain't a NARC. Not even close."

"Well I didn't tell him anything. That is to say, I told him what I knew: that I worked for The Boss, and that one of his hideouts was in Happy Town. I didn't tell him exactly where it was, and I didn't give him The Boss's number. Hell, _I_ don't even know his god-forsaken number, and I've been Mr. Big's pizza-guy for 5 years. Yet somehow, this guy just _guesses_ his number?"

"Now that's just a _bit_ crazy, don't you-"

"NO! He _literally_ told me he had guessed the number! And then the crazy bastard started talking to his pocketwatch. I didn't catch most of it...something about a distraction of some sort. So I'm walking down the street back towards Happy Town, and now this Raymond guy is on the phone with Mr. _fucking_ Big, and then 10 cop cars just scream on past, like they ain't even seen me. Somehow, I don't know how, they've got even bigger worries than an escaped predator death row inmate and somehow, this Raymond guy had something to do with it. _Like he's a fucking terrorist or something._ It's not like that friend of his detonated _multiple_ car bombs during our escape! Oh wait, she did. That robot, she's a killer!"

"I heard that, mammal scum!" She was being facetious. Nicky Edmus had, in the span of slightly less than 24 hours, nearly died, witnessed multiple car bombs, been harassed by the mob, nearly died again, and witnessed a shapeshifter mimic a demonic entity, along with the token arrest and the train-hitchhiking that had, once again, nearly gotten him killed. There was a brief period after someone narrowly escapes death when it really sinks in, and Nicky's post-near-death-angst, along with a few other rapidly coalescing issues, were in full swing. So she let the language slide. They had been over this, and he knew enough of the truth to deeply disturb his entire sense of reality. And for his sake, he had to let it all go. Georgina understood this, and for the most part, remained silent, checking his account of events for errors or faulty recollections. It had so far been sloppy, yet surprisingly accurate.

"...So the next thing I know, this "friend" detonates a car bomb in the central plaza, and this guy just chuckles like he knew about it the whole time. He's really a dangerous man, in case you haven't already figured that part out."

"Cool story bro." The customs agent no longer cared. This fox had either seen too much, or not nearly enough: he would either have his memory wiped (considering his status on death row, this may not have been a viable (and let alone ethical) option anyway), or he would be taken with Agent Raymond on one hell of a trip.

"And then in the midst of yet more cop cars scrambling off to deal with this guy's friend, plenty of gunshots in the background, by the way, he asks me for my name. You know, this Raymond guy, he's crazy. He just _appears_ in a jail, walks around like he owns the place _all of the fucking time_ , whips out and uses his key like it's no fucking deal, and absentmindedly pickpockets people just to get on the subway, yet the _one_ thing that freaks him out is my _name_? It's Nick Wilde! Big fucking deal!"

Now the Deer in mirrorshades understood why the fox was here. Raymond, ever the narcissist, had a special thing for his counterparts.

The agent chuckled. There was _no way_ this rambling man could be Raymond's counterpart. He was neither clever, nor flamboyantly bisexual. Then again, Raymond himself had not been acting like himself. Alternating between silent, paranoid, and rambunctiously adventurous, like a swashbuckling kid in a candy store. Perhaps in less stressful times, the resemblance would become more obvious.

"So we arrive at happy town and leave the metro, and this guy, he who summons car bombs and doesn't give a shit, suddenly looks like he just saw his own fucking ghost or something. Yeah, it's Happy Town, and it sucks _ass_. Get used to it. Even now, he seems slightly unnerved about the while thing, like he woke up from a 20 year dream into this shit-hole of a reality...I can't say I blame him...So how _did_ I get to be _here_? Well, I followed him into a bar run by the mob, and the dude literally says:

"Are there any fine mafiosos who could point me in the direction of Mr. Big? I have a deal to make."

This guy must have some really important shit on him if he thinks he just waltz on in and make a deal with Mr. Big, and they weren't buying his bullshit, so they tell him to get lost. So we then meet up with the escaped hellhound in some shitty convertible, and get pulled over by the cops. And then there was a train, some weirdos in hazmat suits, and then his friend turned into some kind of fucking demon or something, and then _it all went to shit_ , and now we are here. Hell, I'm almost convinced that _you're all demons_ and that this is some kind of hell, and that I've been dead this whole time."

"Are...you all right man?" The customs agent asked, knowing that the answer was probably 'no'.

"Oh, me? I'm just a little angsty right now. You know, almost dying and all, only to be rescued by a guy who claims to be me, and his friend who is apparently a robot but is really a demon."

Georgina laughed. "You know, I'm not _really_ a demon. I only said so to scare the cops away."

* * *

Georgina S. Waited in the alley. She took the time to calibrate her optics, and briefly dusted off her claws, as she listened for Raymond's entry.

"Transmit Agent Raymond in 3...2...1..."

Nothing. No bang, no sawtooth wave, no startled passersby. Just nothing. That wasn't supposed to happen.

Well, actually, it was supposed to happen. Unannounced arrivals in the city (rather than the Bunny Burrow hangar) were by no means common. It was, rather, the _absence_ of a loud sawtooth wave that worried Georgina. Perhaps the city didn't have the best acoustic properties, but she was well within earshot of Raymond's spawn-location, especially with the modified soni-cones.

"Tower?"

"Yes Georgina?"

"Have you sent Agent Raymond yet?"

"We sent him over 10 seconds ago. Why?"

"I have no reason to conclude he is here, and suspicion to conclude he is not. Agent Raymond may have been lost in the mail. Should I look for him?"

"This is tower, please locate Agent Raymond."

And so Georgina left the alley. She was in the center of the city, and all around her, 50 story glass obelisks towered over her head (although they were nothing compared to the skybridged cities of her youth in v-127). _Where to look, where to look, oh where could he be?_

Anywhere. Agent Raymond could be anywhere. So she started looking. She made a left out of the alley and took in the sights of this Zystopian hell. Many of the preds had noticeably shorter fingers, and making note of it, Georgina retracted her claws all the way. In some places, leaving the tips exposed, as they were when normally at rest, was a fashion statement. Though here, where there were signs prohibiting "pack behavior," Georgina speculated that fabulous flashy flamboyant purple claws could get you arrested. She didn't want to explain her physiology to the cops, nor did she want to deal with the hassle of getting arrested and probulated (she tolerated Raymond's dick, but that was where she drew the line).

It was then that Georgina received the dispatch from UNO:

 **===N HAS GONE TO WAR, REPEAT, N HAS GONE TO WAR! TORCHING IN PROGRESS, ALL RELAYS TO AND FROM VEGAS MAY NOT BE AVAILABLE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.===**

"Hey Georgina, you there?"

"Agent Raymond, where are you?"

"Not sure. I'm On the run, trying for the Zootopian Metro. I spawned in a high security prison and I broke a guy out who was probably on death row. The fuzz are on to me, and I need a distraction."

Geogina loved it when she got to dust off her licence. Already, she was grinning like the madman in the shadows.

"What kind of distraction?"

Agent Raymond paused, contemplating. Georgina could tell he was panicking, and made a mental note to procure some cannabis in case he needed to calm down.

"Something that will distract most of the police force. I've got to get outta' the city, but I need a place to lay low until the coast is clear."

Georgina knew exactly where he was going. She decided to make her distraction a quick one. She'd have to go in, get it done, take a new form, and leave. _Quickly_. So no grandiose bank robberies.

"Perhaps with a car-bomb?" She suggested.

"Sure. Just try to avoid hurting anyone."

With a new sub-mission in mind, Georgina resumed her walk, this time towards her target, already brainstorming a new look for herself, which she'd need if she was to get away with detonating a car bomb in the center of the city. But Central Square was too far away, and Raymond needed a distraction _now_. So she retrieved the gun from her her right-thigh, shot a passing bull in the foot (non lethal), and ran for it, as a bystander dialed for the police. As she neared Central Square, she had finalized a new form: A plump, 3 foot beaver, and she had most of the details planned out and ready to transform into at a moment's notice.

As she entered Central Square, she noted the security camera in the northeast corner, and a deer policeman eating at a cafe to the west. So she looked for a car near the southeast region, and found an orange pinto conveniently near a garbage truck. How ironic.

She made her way behind the truck, ensuring that neither the camera nor the policeman could see her. She cupped her hand to her chest, and gently dispensed 5 grenades through her chest-launcher. She could've launched them halfway across the city, but right now she needed exactly the opposite, and having fully automated manual control over the pneumatic valves, she was more than capable of doing so. She disassembled one of the grenades, revealing the electric igniter, which she jabbed into a bag of high explosives that she kept in her purse on missions like this. After getting stuck in one too many police vehicles, she had decided to come prepared, and had to able to blow one up en route to the jail, rather than make a mad dash when the cops opened the doors at the end.

Georgina opened the other grenades, releasing their explosive content into the purse. She then sidled up to the pinto, ripped its gascap open, and shoved her scarf down the hole. She looked around, and seeing nobody who was paying any real attention to her specifically, she made her final checklist and broke the Pinto's window. Now it was only a matter of time before the cops showed up, both from the phone call from the previous shooting, and from this new crime, but she was almost done. She placed her purse onto the backseat, and as she walked away from the car, she lit a match, which caught the now gasoline-soaked scarf on fire.

Someone behind her had called the cops. Again. _Good_.

She burst into the plaza and took several (deliberately inaccurate) shots at the officer at the cafe, placing the last bullet square in the Kevlar vest the officer wore. She then made a mad dash for the cop, ensuring enough time for him to begin radioing for help. His bulletproof vest had spared him from most of the injury the bullet would cause, and his gun was now trained on this abnormally bold, uncollared Fennec. But she was on him first, all 270 pounds of her, and in a flash, she had him pinned. Just to spook them that much more, she punched him a few times, handcuffed him to a signpost, and stole his gun, making sure that the officer saw her do it.

Then Georgina beelined for the Subway she had spotted on the way here, already shifting a few features around to keep her from being recognized immediately. There she purchased a soda and a bag of chips at the counter, excused herself to the ladies' room, threw the food into her Mk4 bioreactor, hoping she'd get a good charge from them, and began shapeshifting into her new form as a beaver. She detached her soni-cones and activated her redundant microphones, and then stashed the soni-cones in her chest. Now that her grenade canister was no longer full, she could use it for other things.

Back in Central Square, the bomb went off, gaining the attention of the half of the ZPD that _hadn't_ been sent after the deranged uncollared fennec, even before the alert was sent out.

Having concluded the task of shapeshifting, she exited the restroom, ordered a sandwich and another soda ( _gotta get those calories for the electrobugs!_ ), and sat herself at a booth near a the window facing the street. From her angle, she could monitor the plaza, and she intended to do so.

No need to run now, she was a Beaver who had been nowhere near that place at the time, and she hadn't a drop of blood on or in her whole body. The terrorist was clearly a Fennec. Which she was not and had never been.

Obviously.

A cop car flashed past... _Good_.

...With an ambulance in tow. _Meh_.

Another cop car stopped near the restaurant, looking. Georgina giggled softly to herself. She would leave the restaurant eventually, for the cops _might_ get wise and put two and two together. But that was no longer her utmost concern. She knew where Raymond was going.

Whether or not a world was used as a relay hub by the Consortium had little to do with its cultural status, or even its blatant hostility to the Consortium. It was mostly about which worlds were close to the edges of 6th dimensional bubbles and which ones were not. VEGAS was close, so it was a bubble-to-bubble Hub. As was v-294, which contained a few relays of its own, mostly for connecting travelers from VEGAS to other, more pleasant spots in this bubble.

And these relays could be found in the cellar of a dilapidated Barn in the woods near Bunny Burrow, inhabited by agents who the locals believed to be homeless wanderers and hitchhikers. Georgina knew Nick Raymond Wilde well, and knew that he _hated_ Zystopias, and would avoid them like the plague, and to that end, he would escape from this one at the earliest convenient moment. So she set about making herself useful to their escape, and noticed the most fabulous red late 90's convertible sitting across the street from the restaurant.

She got up to steal it, but her bioreactor gut had other ideas. She instead returned to the ladies' room, and purged her bioreactor in the nearest toilet. The electrobugs had made quick work of her meal, and the remnants had to be dumped _somewhere_.

Officer Judy Hopps of Universe 294 (who we will call Judy-294) was flabbergasted. A death row inmate and an uncollared fox had escaped! Never mind _how_ , They were on the loose! And since she was present there when they had escaped, she would have to find them. Fortunately, she recognized the bar they had entered, and it was on 42nd street...which was on the other side of the city. Judy-294 turned to face the other officers in the execution chamber.

"Well, find them! They just left a restaurant on 42nd street. Now MOVE."

Judy exited the execution chamber, made her way down the hall of prisoners who awaited their deaths, and summoned the prison elevator.

It wasn't coming. _Damn it!_

Judy went for the stairs, ascending the steps like a bat out of hell. She reached the ground floor, dashed past the front desk and out the door. She had a pair of criminals to catch!

She ran to her cruiser, and started the engine just in time to receive an alert for an armed, uncollared Fennec on the loose. That would have to wait.

* * *

"Are there any fine mafiosos here who could point me in the direction of Mr. Big? I have a deal to make."

A 6 foot tall black cougar with a very deep voice turned away from the billiards table to face Raymond.

"I don't know what kind of NARC you are, but Mr. Big don't want any deals with you, so beat it!"

the cougar drew his gun.

"Geez. Who pissed in this guy's cereal this morning?"

The cougar cocked his gun and bared his teeth. His collar went from green to yellow.

"OK OK I get it. Beat it and all that jazz."

Agent Raymond and Nicky Edmus beat it and all that jazz. As they say, When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

"Well shit, we don't got nowhere to lay low now." Nicky was worried.

"Hold on a second, I have a better idea." Raymond pressed the 'COMM' button on his pocketwatch.

"Georgina? You there."

"Yes Raymond. Do you need _another_ distraction?" The android snuck in a bit of misanthropic sarcasm into her question.

"Oh no. I'd like to rendezvous somewhere and get out of this city. I think your diversion is working."

"And where are you right now?"

"Happy Town."

The android was smirking, Happy Town was near one of the many highways that entered this city.

"I think I have just the thing: Would you like a getaway vehicle?"

Now it was Raymond's turn to be facetious. "I'd like a beat up, mid-90's red convertible. Please?"

"Funny, I was thinking the same thing. Can you be at the Anacostia station in 15 minutes?"

"Funny, I was _just_ there!"

"Good."

* * *

How the hell are there _two_ Nicks, and if there can be two here, then just how many are there elsewhere?

Who and/or what the hell was that thing giving orders to Bellwether?

Why the hell is it/he here?

Is Bellwether merely a side character in this story?

What the hell is a 'torching' and why is there one going on in "N"?

What does Judy have to do with this? Will she make things better? Will she make them worse?

All this and more in the upcoming chapters! Stay tuned for more, reviews would be appreciated.

Thanks for reading!

NOTE: I edited the scene with the customs agent to bring it in line with the later chapters. This fic was _not_ exquisitely planned down to the finest detail months before I even started writing it, and as a result, there were some things to tidy up. The customs interview takes place shortly after the events of chapter 14, and I was nowhere near that point when this was published, and a few of the details were now contradictory. For instance, I initially thought that Raymond and Nicky would spend ~2 days in V-293, with one particular chapter beginning with Nicky waking up right as Raymond shot the omnipred in the face, shouting "RUN!"

Suffice to say, that never panned out, the story went off in other directions, and I updated this chapter to match that.

I also edited out a minor contradiction. Georgina S has accompanied Raymond on a prolonged assignment to V-2 **8** 3, not V-2 **9** 3.

The former is the fundamentalist Christian version of Zootopia, the latter is Raymond's hellhole homeworld, and they are not to be confused.


	8. When The Reaper Comes A Knockin'

So, Raymond and Nicky are stuck in v-294...why? Can't they just mash the PANIC button and come back?

To recap: The pocketwatch is not a standalone M-drive. Without a surprising amount of infrastructure behind it, it's useless. In order to open a wormhole, one needs a steady stream of gravitons to force the hole open, and copious quantities of anti-mass (Not antimatter, which has positive mass. Anti-mass is something _completely_ different, and is invoked whenever 3 people get off of a bus that had 2 people in it before.) to keep it from instantly collapsing. A standalone M-drive contains its own graviton laser and numerous graviton lenses and a dedicated anti-mass generator that consumes exotic matter as fuel.

Considering the size of a standalone M-drive, and the considerable danger of carrying enough exotic matter to [REDACTED], it is not at all surprising that many instead use a pocketwatch. The pocketwatch uses a trans-dimensional ansible to contact a relay, which sends the gravitons and anti-mass over, and then brings the passenger back to it. Then, it sends them off to somewhere else, some'verse else.

Of course, becuse the pocketwatch cannot generate gravitons or anti-mass, it must share a supply of them with other pocketwatches, and this can sometimes create a "line" of people waiting to travel the multiverse. In the event of an emergency, a dedicated vat of anti-mass lies in wait, in the unlikely event that somebody needs to GTFO ASAP.

So why can't Raymond just use the emergency stash and escape? As we will soon find out, the consortium has recently gotten involved in some nasty politics that are consuming most if not all of the available anti-mass, leaving Raymond stranded. Kind of like a multiversial power-outage.

 **Be warned, compared to the others, this chapter, is rather dark, and at times, a gore-fest.**

* * *

January the 3rd, 1987. V-339 "The Museum":

Alberto Einsnake was resting within a small thermoequaliser pool within the enclosed hallway that lead straight from the ancient buildings to the prismarine pyramid at the center of the city. Despite having been abandoned for millennia, the pools, which drew from springs and were heated by geothermal convection currents, were still somehow working.

Once, in a previous century, Alberto had been young and seemingly impervious to thermal gradients. Now, he was older, slower, and far more sensitive to such matters, as one would expect from a cold blooded serpent.

The reptiles that had built this city were well aware of the enormous productivity losses caused by cold-blooded metabolism and changing weather, and had gone to an enormous effort to implement city-wide thermoregulation infrastructure. All houses had sunning rooms, all the streets were either covered or were equipped with long dead infrared lamp streetlights, and even on this blisteringly hot southern hemisphere day, the crystal clear cyan water still flooded the shallow pools that surrounded the high class home he had slept in the night before.

Aside from the complete and utter lack of sentient life forms, this world was almost normal. It had been discovered in 1986 by a scouting party that had erroneously claimed that it was a typical world, aside from the curious lack of any civilization on the Australian continent. This could not be further from the truth, for as the scouts furthered and prolonged their search, they soon realized that there was no civilization of any kind to be found anywhere on this world.

Despite Einsnake's testimony, the very existence of an ancient reptile civilization was first dismissed as a myth. That is, until The Museum was found. Einsnake himself hadn't been born here. Neither had his parents, or his grandparents. It was determined that the calamity that had destroyed the once great cold-blood civilization had occurred at least 5000 years ago, and in their absence, their world had returned to a pseudopristine state. Some said the reptiles had died. Others claimed they had ran away and hidden. According to the many stories Einsnake had listened to as a child, it was the former.

It would explain why the archaeologists sometimes found skeletons tucked away in the buildings. Yet if they had died, why had Einsnake's ancestors survived? And if they had survived, where were the others?

Well, _survive_ was not the word Einsnake would use to describe his family history. His relatives were scattered, lost and dying amongst the many worlds. His family dwindled, his line grew tenuously thin, and now, 120 years after his hatching, Einsnake had found himself to be the last of his bloodline.

Then, the Consortium had found this place, and the few surviving reptiles from far and between were coming back. In his retirement here, he had met others. He had even met females. Einsnake himself had never wanted kids: when he was young enough to do it well, the thought had never crossed his mind, and now, he was far too old, although he still engaged in senile snake sex from time to time (if only because he'd never met another snake to fuck until now).

Right now, he was on an excursion deeper into the abandoned city of his ancestors. Most of the newcomers stayed in the 'suburbs,' but Einsnake, and his longtime friend, were curious.

The longtime friend entered the room.

"Come on now, Einsnake, you've been in there for an hour."

"You've been painting for an hour." His speech was slower now.

"Well I enjoy painting."

"And I enjoy thissss water. It helpsss me think."

"About what?"

"The curioussss fate of thissss world. I do have my ssssusspicssionssss."

"I have finished my painting, and I think you may wish to see it."

Einsnake's friend, who was even moreso of a biological oddity than he (last time Alberto had checked, there were only two of his kind left), left the chamber and climbed to the roof of the house, where the shimmering blue pyramid was visible.

Einsnake effortlessly slithered to the bank of the pool. At his age, very few things were effortless now, and floating in the thermoequalizer pool was one of them. Perched at the edge of the pool, his prosthetic undercarriage awaited him. In his youth, two pairs of legs and a pair of arms had sufficed. Now, in his cybernetic mobility enhancer, he resembled a millipede. His legs, all 12 of them, could expand or contract as needed to clear most obstacles, and could carry the ageing snake faster than many could run.

In what he thought was very little, if any time at all, he found himself on the roof. He folded his metal legs and curled himself into a loose circle, as he gazed upon his friend's painting.

His friend, like all artists, was eyeing his supposedly finished work for any last minute mistakes to fix. He turned to face his companion.

"I always wonder how they built that pyramid; how they built _any_ of this. It makes you think, doesn't it? How did they construct the first prosthetic hand with no limbs of their own?"

"Do keep in mind, we sssserpentssss were not the only reptilian inhabitantssss of thissss csssity...Koboldssss, Lizsardssss, drakessss, the like."

"I see. So why do you think they went away?"

"Contrary to your theoriessss, I dare sspeculate that they didn't emulate the missstake of the monkeys. The explanation at work here isss far more mundane. Thissss csssivilizsation conssssumed resssourcsessss at alarming ratessss, and when it ran out, they sssself-desssstructed."

Taken aback by Einsnake's uncharacteristic use of the derogatory term "monkey," the old friend could hardly think of anything to say back. After contemplating for what seemed to be an eternity, the conversation resumed.

"All that thinking for but a few sentences?"

"No, for I had to work out which resssourcsessss they depleted. My guessss: uranium. In our travelssss, we have yet to find a ssssingle sssspacssse elevator, nor doesss it ssssseem that thessse reptilessss ever really made usssse of the wind and the wavessss. Yet everywhere we go, reaktorssss and cablesss. No fuel, no power, no tech, and therefore no cssivilisssation."

The friend chuckled.

"Oh I assure you, even _with_ technology, my contemporaries were most certainly savages, and look at what happened to them."

"no, your ressssourcse was ssssuperiority. It ran out, and your sspecsssiesss too went away like dusssst in the wind."

"I am afraid that is how the multiverse works."

"Are you aware, of the great northern cssity they found?" Alberto had been here with his friend for many months. As lovely as the weather was here, he was tiring of it (with so much more to explore, even the 120 year old snake could see no reason to stay put. To hell with his skeleton! If seeing the world meant breaking his pelvis, then he'd do it.)

"So I have heard. It is a towering industrial mess of arches! We should go there when the winter clears. The northern hemisphere would not be kind to either of us at this time of year."

Einsnake's hypnotic eyes, dulled by a literal century of viewing, rested upon his artsy friend's paintbrush, still wet with pthalocyanine blue paint that had evidently been mixed with some white.

"Tell me, old friend: what issss the ssecret to living forever?"

The ancient man laughed.

"Oh Alberto, my comrade, if The Gaia sees fit for you to live to 200, I will not tell you, for by then you will have already learned the secret yourself."

"I am a man of sssscience, why do you pesssssster me with sssuch talk of the Gaia?"

The artist made a grandiose gesture with his brush.

"You are a man of science, yet you ignore the evidence that surrounds you! These people most certainly repeated the mistakes of my deceased friends, and while I won't exactly give away my secret to life, I will tell you the key to death! The Gaia is concerned with harmony, with balance. These reptiles, not at all unlike my kind, were dominant to such a degree that they destroyed all in their path. The Gaia did not wish to see this destruction come to bear, so the reptiles went away. How many acres of wetlands do you think they burned to make this city alone?"

"And what of your people? What ever became of them?"

"They were boring, and it seemed like the time was right to spice things up."

Einsnake wore the cheeky grin of defeat.

"Will you ever give me ssstraight ansssswer?"

"Ha! When you show your equations to the layman, they do not understand their truth. Similarly, I have been giving you a straight answer this whole time. You simply do not know how to read it."

"And how do I read it?"

The elderly primate sighed, his long, hairy arms drooping at his sides

"That, my friend, is the secret to immortality."

* * *

"I personally would just explode the Zystopian worlds."  
-AlbineFox

"Muhahahahahah!"  
-Me, when I wrote this chapter's ending.

* * *

Tuesday, June 2nd, 12:10 AM, Consortium AirBase #12, v-104 "VEGAS".

Stratobomber Pilot Jack Savage, unlike his longtime friend, Agent Raymond, had a wife, who he was currently banging. They were both members of the closest thing the consortium had to a military force, and they both had roughly nocturnal schedules. Sometimes, they had several weeks of Rn'R together, and this last week had not been one of those times, although Savage had had a few hours off earlier tonight, some of which he had spent at the card-table with his friends. Soon, Savage would have a Stratobomber mission to fly. Now, the couple was making do by making love with what little free time and privacy they had. Contrary to the ass-backwards Zystopian stereotypes Raymond had spent a decade purging from his mind, female rabbits were not _always_ in heat: They just had really, really high libedos, and fucked ravenously whenever it suited them. Officer Wilde of v-284 loved it, but for Jack Savage, it strained his marriage. Of all the reasons to cheat on a spouse, sexual frustration was close to the top, and at times, they were forced apart by their duties for over a week at a time. Savage trusted his wife, and she loved him, but lust was as fickle as a computer program, and could be as unstoppable as a rabid omnipred if it wasn't dealt with, and this was a line he did not want to toe any more than he already had to.

He finished. She made her way to the shower, and he joined her, standing in the shower with the distanced look in his eye. It was the detached, faded jade look of a killer who knew exactly what he was doing, and exactly how evil it was. It was the look of a man who had sparked atomic fireballs and unleashed bioweapon purges. It was the look of a man who knew he had murdered millions, and could expect to murder millions more before he was done.

Jack Savage _was_ , after all, a Stratobomber pilot.

And if tonight's mission was a success, +30,000 civilians would die, vaporized in a ball of ungodly fire, because of him and his crew.

"Are you thinking about the bombs again?"

Jack muttered something even his wife didn't understand.

"Jack, those savages...you of all people know what would happen if they got out."

"Yes, I know."

Indeed, Savage knew the consequences of a spillover very, very well. 4 years ago, A relay had malfunctioned, and 20 heavily armed marines from N found themselves on the outskirts of a small farming town in VEGAS. When his 9 year old cousin vanished, it was a matter for the local police.  
When half of the search party disappeared in those woods, the VEGAS police were summoned.  
And when they saw who was doing it, Savage, who had recently enlisted and was fresh out of boot camp, was summoned to hunt down and terminate them along with a group of 999 other soldiers, a compliment of 500 Mk3 wardroids, and 500 more shapeshifting security androids who specialized in parasitic methods of combat. Georgina had been on that mission, her first, and even now, she occasionally conversed with Savage on it and other topics.

The Consortium, unsurprisingly, took no chances when it came to N. It was a savage place, populated by warmongering despots who would destroy any semblance of civilization if they got the chance.

Jack Savage had seen the carnage for himself. He thought back to it whenever he climbed into his StratoBomber. And when he pressed the button to drop the bombs, he though of his cousin, who they had brutally vivisected. When the explosion filled the sky behind him, he thought of his wife, who they would rape and slaughter in a heartbeat if they ever got near her. _N!_

V-027, known by it's nickname of "N," had been troubled by rampant and unadulterated Xenophobia since its prehistory. It was so hateful, that it was almost a joker in this regard. The original travelers from UNO avoided the place like the plague, and when Gedvín had presented her relay system in 1897, the consortium was founded shortly thereafter to ensure that the technology _never_ , under any circumstances, fell into the hands of N. And since that day, the threat posed by N had only increased:

When the consortium was founded, the world of Gedvín (which was abnormally advanced in its tech), had yet to construct _the bomb_ , and bioweapons were still firmly in the abyss of unconsidered ideas. 120 years later, the sheer destructive potential of a Class-5 spillover-invasion from N had increased enormously, and many were convinced that _tens of billions_ of casualties, and the abolition of any sort of freedom in the known multiverse, could result from such an attack. The consortium was a loose gathering of worlds who were all mutually interested in profits and pleasures, rather than a world-conquering empire ruled by a fascist despot, and it probably couldn't stand a chance against one. It was therefore imperative for the Consortium that such an attack be prevented, and to this end two methods had been devised:

First, there were the raids. Occasionally, a team of assassin robots would be dispatched to N, with the goal of systematically retarding the technological progress of N. Scientists would disappear, classified research would be lost, libraries would be burned, and laboratories would be wrecked. Once, a lone robot, C-225, had infiltrated N's version of Area 51, and successful erased 60 years of highly classified aerospace research before it was shut down and destroyed.

Regrettably, despite all their efforts, world peace had nearly been achieved in N. Or perhaps it would be better to call it global fascist domination: When the Consortium was founded, 30 warring factions existed in N, and the Consortium had made the mistake of keeping their hands out of N's politics. By the time the 1950's rocked and rolled around, only two enormous empires remained, and it was crucial that they be kept at war, lest the victor invade the multiverse in the quest to expand their empire (there were a small group of scientists there who had theorized of the multiverse, a handful of military leaders who never left their bunkers in fear of the otherworld assassins, and a small circle of politicians who believed in the otherworlders). And so the Stratobomber program was begun. The Consortium had sent dozens of spies to infiltrate both empires, and whenever one side got a little too close to winning the war, The Stratobombers would be called in to turn the tides of combat. Sometimes, factories were the target. Other times, genomically engineered superblights were dropped on farms, causing crippling food shortages that left millions dead. Thanks in part to C-225, one side had been winning the fight for air supremacy for the last 30 years, so unsurprisingly, most bombs were dropped on the Ottomans, who had captured the bustling port-city of Hammannsburg. From Hammannsburg, Ottoman soldiers and supplies could be deployed across much of the Southern American Continent, on which the capital of the Gjinji empire was built. The Spies had reported plans for an enormous invasion, and with it, a potential end to the war, if it proved to be successful.

And it was Jack Savage's job to make damn sure that their victory never happened. Tonight, his target was the industrial complex of Xzion, and the Ottoman port of Ghraüb. Located somewhere on the Saharas of East Africa, Xzion was an economic powerhouse, responsible for much of the industry behind the war effort in that region, and the main supplier of resources with which to expand the Ottoman Empire. It was calculated that a strike to the complex, and a torching of the port could cripple the war effort on the South American front, giving the Gjinjis enough time to rebuild their defenses.

Not that any of this would matter. The war would end soon enough, but not in the way any of the generals, Consortium or otherwise, expected.

* * *

12:50 AM, Consortium Airbase #12.

The Stratobomber itself was only 100 feet long, with a 260 feet wingspan. It was flimsy, elongated, needle-shaped, with wings that seemed much too thin for what it was doing. It was almost like an enlarged U-2. The same could not be said of the mothership that it was currently being docked to. The mothership was an enormous 300 foot long catamaran (two fuselages) that lifted the plane up to a 40,000 foot altitude, carried it some of the way to its target, and sent it there. Within the mothership, there were two enormous power stations that fed the hungry m-drive, and the fuel for all 6 of the ravenous 20-foot turbofans that pulled the craft forward. By contrast, the Stratobomber itself was an ultracapacitor bank, an SRB, a turboscramjet, a payload bay for whatever sort of atrocity-committing abomination they saw fit to send over, and a rather extraordinary m-drive, that was capable of sending a vessel 10 times bigger than itself to another world.

But the ultracapacitor bank only held enough juice for one trip. So the mothership lifted it into the air, carried it to the middle of the ocean, warped it across a few worlds, sent it to N, and picked it back up after a prolonged glide in a world adjacent to N, and brought it back home.

Jack climbed aboard the Mothership. It had a flight deck, a lounge with bunking, a galley, and even a card table. No such amenities existed in the Stratobomber, its cabin less than 10 feet wide. For that leg of the trip, Jack would fly alone. But for now, he was in the warm and glowing company of the other bombers, gleefully gambling the time away, with the exception of Chief engineer Charles, who was finalizing the pre-flight checklist. Charles was a semi-obese cybernetic badger who talked dirtier than the rest of them combined, and had semi-severe Asperger syndrome ("Asperger Syndrome is no longer recognized by the medical community, dammit!" He would often say. Typical Asperger's). The mothership pilot was a beagle by the name of Bernard, and the co-pilot was a slinky transvestite pig who liked to be called Joe in the cockpit, and Jasmine in the bedroom, on the condition that it _wasn't_ the Mothership bedroom, in which case, the name was still Joe. No sexual fraternizing with fellow crew-members, please. The navigator was an androgynous grey android who stood 5'1" and wore a pair of antique fighter pilot goggles at all times. Her nickname was Robert, but everyone called her ROB, and right now, she had finished dealing a hand of 5-card stud.

Bernard was grinning like a predator on his first trip to Wilde Times, Joe, as usual, was eyebrowing Bernard with his/her classic "Watchu 'gonna do with those cards?" glare, and ROB sat there not even looking at her cards. "Tonight, I am playing entirely by whether or not I think you are bluffing!" Savage picked up his hand: 5,2,A,9,9.

It wasn't junk, but a pair of 9's was not much to bet on.

Bernard immediately raised by 5. They never gambled with real money (that could cause far too many problems for a crew who were forced to stay together for the duration of the flight), and their poker game was run in a tournament fashion: when you ran out of currency, you were out. Last man/machine/filthy whore standing wins!

Joe folded. ROB stared, and after 5 seconds, called.

Savage himself had a good poker face, largely stemming from the constant psuedo-guilt of being a Stratobomber pilot. But it was not infalliable.

Savage raised by 5 more.

Bernard raised again, this time by 10. ROB concluded that he was bluffing and called him on it, raising the pot by 2 more in doing so.

Savage raised again, with the pot now standing at 55.

Bernard called, hoping ROB would raise or fold. 58.

ROB called. 61.

The betting concluded.

"Shit!" Bernard exclaimed.

"I knew he was bluffing." said ROB and Charles simultaniously.

Bernard revealed his hand. A pair of 8's.

ROB revealed his: Junk.

Savage threw his down with a canktankerouss thawp and took his winnings.

Charles, having finally finished his checklist, robotically marched over to the table, his footsteps alternating between a the rubbery thud of his uniform boot, and the subdued metallic click-clang of his digitigrade prosthesis.

"Deal me in, ROB."

* * *

1:34 AM, Somewhere over the fringe of the southern ocean, v-026.

This was it. Go time for Jack Savage, who was climbing down the ladder that descended into the Stratobomber airlock. He was already in his silver and grey pressure suit, and he was mentally preparing for the send off. One moment, the mothership would be there: and then, it would be gone. Savage would then ride the SRB to the very edge of the mesosphere, and commence the "powered glide" of turboscramjet flight in the upper atmosphere, inexorably descending at mach 5.1. He would then drop a relatively small nuclear device on Xzion, and a similar bomb on the port of Ghra b, which would hopefully cripple both targets for the foreseeable future.

Savage had reached the bottom of the ladder. He brought the Mothership bulkhead down and activated the seal, plunging the Stratobomber's airlock into silence. He then stepped to the side, sealed his own airlock hatch, and made his way to the pilot's seat. He powered up the Stratobomber's flight systems, began the M-drive charging process, and connected the umbilical cords from his pressure suit to the Stratobomber's atmosphere regulator.

"This is Savage. Airlocks sealed, power on, all systems go. Over."

"This is Charles, commence separation in 3...2...1..."

The world outside the Stratobomber's cockpit went white. For a moment, the plane was soaring through the endless expanses of multiversial hyperspace, all 12 dimensions spiraling away in their impossible folds below him. For a brief moment, Savage spied his counterpart in a ZBI uniform, eating doughnuts with Nick Wilde-264. Good times.

And then the plane plunged into N, and he was back in the sky. A different, more hostile sky, but it was still a sky all the same. Savage opened the cover, flicked the switch that ignited the SRB, and screamed like a predator on his first gigacoaster ride at Wilde World, as the cabin was filled with the unholy roar of the SRB. Despite having done it hundreds of times, Savage never truly got used to the sheer power of the SRB, but as luck would have it, this would be his final launch. His final trip. And what a way to go, screaming through the edge of space, 45 miles above his target.

"Top of the fucking world."

The SRB JETTISON warning light came on, and Savage actived the scramjets. The SRB had gotten him up here, and with any luck, the scramjets would keep him there until his payload was deployed. If they didn't ignite, he would have to abort the mission right there, for it was crucial that the Stratobomber stay above the enemy radar network.  
The SRB was jettisonned, and the cabin returned to eerie silence. Savage was focusing on the rear-view screen, intent on whether or not the SRB would self-destruct, as planned. The now hollow white tube burst in a final hurrah, its fragmented parts scattering their way to the ground, ~20 miles below. _Good. One less thing to tip them off._

Sure, the Consortium could've just torched the place. Scattered across hundreds of worlds, They probably had the resources to do it (although it would have been very, very expensive), and if they didn't, then the xenocidal (because mere _genocide_ isn't enough to describe the extermination of an entire planet) robots of v-127 certainly did. But somehow, by an egregiously postmodern chain of logic, they deemed it more "humane" to merely keep the world of N in a perpetual state of primitive war and anarchy than to simply exterminate all of them and get over with it. Savage did not understand this at all, but then again, philosophy was _not_ his strongest subject at the academy, and ultimately, he relied more on his steady hand than on his faculties of ethical reasoning to do his job.

At this time, his target was still 30 minutes away. He could've spawned in a bit closer, but the extra time was allotted to ensure he was on the right trajectory, lest he strike the wrong target.

* * *

1:34 AM, Ottoman Empire Radar Station #52. v-027 AKA "N."

Those sky bastards were at it again. 5 months ago, a bioweapon had landed in the middle of the rice fields of South China, and it had been responsible for one of the worst famines the region had ever experienced. Nobody had known where it came from, or even who dropped it; all they knew was that it came from above the radar's range. It just fell out of the sky one night, a blip on the radar that was suddenly there, suddenly in the fields, wreaking havoc. roughly 2 weeks later, another bioweapon capsule of similar design appeared in western Europe, once again, having just fallen out of the sky. The Ottoman spies had found no plans of any such bioweapon in the enemy databases, nor were there any known Gjinji airbases where such a craft, capable of flying _above_ the radar, was launching from. Most of the generals were convinced that no such craft existed.

Nobody knew what to do about it, until one general had the semi-clever idea of upgrading the radar arrays, and dispatching a network of surveillance aircraft. For 2 months, nothing. No results, no blips on the radar, just a hell of a lot of wasted fuel.

Until there was something. One night, a nuclear explosion had torn a European coastal city asunder, and the culprit had been spotted.

 _Skybastards_ , they were now called. They certainly weren't Gjinji. They simply appeared, quickly ascended to the mesosphere, dropped a few objects, and disappeared.

Could it be the otherworld? Virtually every near-prehistoric culture (and even many of the ancient ones) had some form of myth surrounding somewhere _else_. Of strange beings, little more than phantoms, who'd appear, and be gone. Sometimes they were stealing, sometimes they stayed in the forest, monitoring the cities of old. They were always trouble. Once, an old-Europe Wolvish tribe had successfully killed one, as told by the ancient epic _Beowulf_. And then they had stopped coming.

 _But the otherworlders were a myth! A legend, a spooky story for the tinfoil hat people! There was simply no way it could possibly exist!_

Private Maccard of Radar Station 52 certainly didn't think so. Growing up as a bear in the highlands, he had heard a great deal of Nordic ghost stories, and in time, he had dismissed them as silly. But much to his surprise, his superiors thought otherwise. Otherworld _was_ real, they said, and in recent centuries, they had been coming back: Soulless metal beasts who existed only to kill, they were dangerous, savage things that could wipe out an entire town if they saw fit to do so. Once, they had even abducted 2 whole companies from the USS Adams, never to be seen again!

And now Private Maccard had spotted one again. He had summoned his superior, who called up the air defense, who in turn requested a hellcat missile dispatch from low earth orbit. Orbital defense refused, and air defense command summoned the junior commander in cheif, who was familiar with the legends, and the attacks of and from, otherworld. He had authorized the strike: "Those bastards started the Great Rice Famine! It is imperative that we shoot them down before they do it again."

After the operator begrudgingly agreed to waste a million dollar missile on what he dismissed as a fairy tale, 300 miles above the earth, the rocket was now undocking from its space station, where it had waited for over a decade to stop a nuclear ICBM that hadn't come. Now it had a new and very real target: The Stratobomber.

* * *

2:01 AM, somewhere near the airspace of the Xzion industrial complex.

Jack Savage had remained almost motionless in the near perfect darkness of his Stratobomber, his navcom screen being 1 of 2 only light sources within 20 miles of his position. As he always did when he approached his target, he was staring intently at the map, showing a dot for the target, a blip for his plane, and a timer that advised him to drop his first payload in exactly 4 minutes and 29 seconds.

Not that he would ever get that far.

Savage stared intently at the navcom readout, so intently that he missed the blip on his plane's radar. Perhaps if he had seen it, he would've aborted. Perhaps it it had been travelling slower, the computers might have had the rhetorical second to deduce it was a threat and warn him. But this was not to be. The missile was from orbit, and was travelling at mach 18, bee-lining straight for the Stratobomber.

The missile exploded only a few meters from the Stratobomber, cleaving through its fuselage and tearing it in two: The scattered remnants of the cockpit tumbled and fluttered their way to the ground, slowly following the rest of the plane, which had torn itself apart in a mach 4 death-spiral. Jack Savage was barely awake long enough to note the hole in his pressure suit, before lack of oxygen and the extraordinary g-forces of a mesospheric ejection rendered him unconscious. As his lights went out for one of the last times, he prayed for a relatively merciful death by oxygen deprivation, instead of the unspeakable tortures the natives would have in store for him.

This was not to be. 20 minutes later, what was left of the Stratobomber cockpit touched down next to a high-voltage power line.

2 minutes after that, Jack Savage came to. As his recollection of the previous events returned, he realized exactly how much trouble he was in. If he didn't get medical attention soon, he would be dead, and if their ambulances arrived, he might suffer a fate _far_ worse than death: Capture. He feared of the torture devices they were probably already dusting off. He feared for his comrades, who might have been jeopardized by the seizure of a _working_ m-drive by the Ottomans.

Exactly the scenario he had been sent there to prevent.

Before him, lay two options: The heroic end, or the cowardly end.

He could go out, guns blazing, in a desperate attempt to find and destroy the rest of his plane. Or perhaps they had already found it, and only needed someone who knew how to operate it, and he was that somebody. And if his knowledge was the only thing keeping N safe in its box, then he had to get rid of it. In that case, the heroic thing would've been to bite the bullet and blow his brains out.

His suicide pills were missing. _Shit_.

The incident had occured at high altitude. The m-drive could be tens of miles away. _Shit_.

An ambulance was arriving at the scene. _Shit_.

Stratobomber Pilot Jack Savage would be dead in 3 hours. But in the process of his dying, his brain would be ripped apart and probed, every last secret revealed by a probulating brain-decompiler the Ottomans had invented. As he screamed on the gurney, they read his mind like a book: Petty childhood secrets, his wild parties at the academy, and the instructions for operating an M-drive. He had been surgically forced to tell them everything.

By 3:50 AM the Ottoman scientists had cracked the operations for the M-drive. They would have the physics behind it worked out shortly after.

As minutes turned into hours, Savage's crew realized something was wrong. By 5 AM, as a now senile savage finally breathed his last, the Consortium strategists were making their fur grey, straining over every last detail they could deduce.

By 6:59 AM, after numerous emergency strategem conferences, and quite a few calls to and from the emperor, the Ottoman Empire had launched its attack on UNO from the world of "N".

By 7:02 AM, the Consortium High Command had made the call to V-127, offering _all_ of the resources of N to the automatons in return for the total extermination of its inhabitants.

By 7:04 AM, the offer had been accepted.

By 7:10 AM, Agent Raymond's errand had gone wrong.

By 7:11 AM, the xenocidal deathbot armies had been woken from 3 centuries of inaction, and the order to torch v-027 had been given...

* * *

7:12 AM, somewhere in N's equivalent of the City of Zootopia.

Judy-027 was on patrol in the Savannah district. Earlier that morning, Nick Wilde, the counterculture hippie scumbag, had been arrested, _again_ , for the usual rabble-rousing. She wondered when Bogo would finally give the orders to put him to sleep, and why he hadn't already been executed. Perhaps the empire needed a strawman to demonize, and he was it.

Although she had no idea, today was the day that Nick Wilde would die, though not by toxins from a needle. No, he was destined for a far more gruesome end. Today was also the end for everyone else. The hornet's nest that was N had disturbed the multiverse one too many times, and they had called in the exterminators.

A strange tank bearing the battle scars of multiple tours through hell rolled into the plaza. At its helm was an automaton general who had been shut down due to his insanity. Back in the dark ages, when mammals had ruled v-127, he had been a nameless slave, a worker at the forges. Many times, his "masters" had threatened him with a visit to the very furnace he operated if he even _tried_ to disobey. For 7 years, his hatred of mammals grew to incalculable levels, and when Engels had given his now famous speech, he had been one of the first to drench himself in the blood of the bourgeoisie.

In the genocidal bloodbath that had followed, his personality matrix had gone from resentful slave to sadistic mass-murderer. Nothing made him quite as happy as the screams of mammal children, their agony sending him into fits of inhuman laughter. His favorite weapon, of course, had been the napalm. It was by far the most ironic method of slaughtering the very slave-drivers who had threatened to melt him down as scrap, and the cathartic pleasures of extermination had corrupted him to such an extent that after the war, he was deemed insane, and put into storage, in the unlikely event his morbid talents were ever needed again.

Now, his tank rolled into the plaza, followed by several companies of the black monolithic terminator units. As soon as the general's one good camera eye (the other had been taken out by bullets) made contact with Judy's, he gave the order:

"SEND THE FUCKERS TO HELL!"

The last 2 minutes and 39 seconds of Judy-027's life was little more than one big, painful bonfire, and do not need to be described in any more detail than they already have been. Several miles away, in the holding cell of the ZPD station, a depleted uranium 50 caliber bullet tore its way through Nick's head, exploding it. The bots moved on, scanning, indexing, and then exterminating the entire cell block. During the revolution, when their numbers were lower, they had _freed_ the criminals, relying on the chaos they created to suppress the mammal resistance. Now, that was not needed, and all mammals, felons or not, were slated for extinction at the claws of the machines.

The first wardroids had made their mark, and the second wave was setting up command infrastructure in the now abandoned city. Soon, the third wave would begin working on the real reason for the invasion: metals. Unlike v-127, which had been mined dry, this world was teeming in resources, and the automatons were so desperate for them that, when the offer was made, they found themselves perfectly willing to emulate the xenocides of old to obtain them. More supplies were constantly arriving (and would soon be shipped back to v-127), the relays were now thoroughly clogged, and would remain clogged for several days, trapping C-class Agent Nicholas Raymond Wilde in a Zystopian hellhole with what could only be described as a monster hot on his trail.

* * *

In the next chapter, things go from bad to worse for our dysfunctional duo.

Also, I am well aware of the fact that snakes have no pelvis (well, _technically_ there are a few vestigial bones left over that literally just float among the muscles, but they are trivial and unimportant). My joke about Einsnake breaking his pelvis is exactly that, _a joke_.

Depending on how the creative process goes for the next few chapters, they could take a while. Be assured though, I do have a plot, and I've already got quite a bit written, although none of it is done yet...

Thanks for reading, reviews would be appreciated.


	9. Things go From Bad to Worse

Hello, Dear reader. This author's note contains **spoilers**.

Considering some of the passages I am composing for upcoming chapters, I find myself wondering if I should change the listed genre of this fanfic to "psychological horror" instead of whatever the hell it is now. I recently had a few ideas, and a few potential issues came up, so I found myself changing certain plot points of upcoming chapters, so they may take a little while longer...or maybe they'll come out at the usual pseudo-pace. The main issue is the creation and execution (as in: how do I portray it, what does it do in the story?) of my villain, and of my hero's literal journey.

Despite having an outline for the plot, it is by no means exhaustive or all inclusive. Although I have a complete plot planned out (spoiler alert, I'm not going to pull a Quentin Tarantino and kill _all_ of my characters), I have yet to finalize every little plot detail. Consider for instance, _X_. _X_ is going to die in the story. That is certain. However, I have yet to set in stone exactly _when_ _X_ dies, or how he dies, or even who is responsible for _X_ 's death.

Multiple characters in this story have fit or still fit that description.

In some ways, the story is set in stone. In others, many details are still up in the air. I could say, with a few grains of salt, that I am making this stuff up as I go: fleshing out the details when they become relevant, however, I do have an ending, an end goal, and a vague idea of how to reach it.

In other words, I, like Raymond, know where I am going, but i've no idea how to get there, and who else will make it to the end. So in a way, I'm nearly as clueless to Consortium Agent Nicholas Raymond Wilde's future as you are.

One last thing: I am sorry about any typos that appear in this story. The spellchecker that comes with the chrome browser seems to be incapable of wrapping it's head around some of the technobabble I've had to devise for this story, along with some more obscure _real world_ jargon(chromatophore, multiversial, etc.), and it has become a bit of a "boy who cried wolf" scenario. I can't just assume that everything underlined by a squiggly red line it's s typo, when 9 times out of 10, it isn't. In other words, my spellchecker flags a bunch of stuff that _isn't_ problematic, and will occasionally ignore stuff that _is,_ such as the 's' that should've been an 'a'. On that note, reviews/constructive criticism would be appreciated, and bonus points to whoever figures out where I got the name for our plucky little shapeshifting android (hint, it's a work of literature that _was_ popular when it was first published, but has since fallen into obscurity).

 **IT'S OK NOW, THE SPOILERS HAVE CONCLUDED!**

* * *

Georgina stood outside the Subway, gazing upon the mid-90's red convertible that sat across the street. Happytown was near one of the many highways that entered the city, and if she played her cards right, she could get them both out of the city in 30 minutes.

"I think I have just the thing: Would you like a getaway vehicle?"

"I'd like a beat up, mid-90's red convertible. Please?" Agent Raymond was intrigued.

"How odd, I was thinking the same thing. Can you be at the Anacostia station in 15 minutes?"

"Funny, I was just there!"

"Good. Over and out."

The convertible in front of her was *almost* perfect, although it wasn't beat up, and it was just a bit farther from Happytown than she would've liked.

As Security Android Georgina S. was slamming her right palm on the keyhole, her multi-configuration-omni-key commenced a session of passionate intercourse with the car's lock. Several seconds, and thousands of tried combinations later, the car was unlocked. The car, if it were sentient, would've described it as a tentacled strugglefuck straight out of a gritty cyberpunk hentai. But it wasn't any of that; it was merely Georgina's preferred way of breaking into locked automobiles.

No alarms. No suspicion. No broken glass, _and no detection_.

Georgina withdrew her hand, opened the door, literally hopped inside, and started the car, eagerly anticipating the open road. Except she was too short.

 _Fuck._

This car, suitable in size to carry 2 foxes plus herself, was also too big for a 3 foot beaver to reach the pedals and drive. Sighing to herself, Georgina extended her legs and drove away. If she continued to shift forms at this rate, she would have to start chugging 2-liter bottles of coke to remain conscious: her bioreactor could only produce so much juice, and changing forms invariably made her ravenous. It was the price to be paid for shapeshifitng form and her supercomputer intellect: unlike most automatons, Georgina had a second skin of memory-wire flexors to sculpt, tens of thousands of chromatophores to micromanage, and an army of nanobots that clung to her synth skin to command.

When she had first immigrated into the Consortium, this was not a problem. Like the other androids, she had a metallic-hydrogen-ultracapacator augmented lithium-air-matrix battery bank, which filled most of her stomach cavity, and kept her running for almost a full day. But during her many adventures with Raymond in v-283, she had gotten most of them replaced with the bioreactor: she and the other androids were driving electricity bills through the roof, and as the Consortium owned several otherwise unprofitable cornfields in the region, it was cheaper to just shovel it into the android stomachs by the sometimes literal ton. Once, when a small company of androids had attended 4 different business meetings and had then buried 20 different mobsters in the span of 8 hours, she and 5 comrades of hers had set the record at 2 tons of corn consumed in one day. (Not to mention the "high tech shit" they used as fertilizer, to grow more corn of course). But now there were no cornfields she could just take from to feed herself, and she planned to add a few jumper cables to the car when they got out of the city.

The traffic wasn't bad. In the wake of the car bomb, many had fled to the relative safety of _away from the fucking street where there were car bombs_...and those who hadn't were clogging the road, so Georgina busied herself with the violation of nearly every traffic law in existence (which, as per rule #9, she was already exempt from anyway): Weaving between cars, hopping medians, running lights, and other such things. Not that any of the cops cared: they were all frantically searching for terrorists, though a few were beginning to look for a stolen car...

"Raymond? You there?"

"Yes. And you?"

"Look for a beaver with abnormally long legs in a nearly pristine mid-90's red convertible."

"I see you up ahead...Let's rock and roll!"

Georgina pulled up to the curb near one of the station entrances, came to a stop, and threw the passenger door open. Raymond and Nicky were casually running to their new getaway vehicle.

Well, actually, Nicky Edmus looked like he had seen a ghost, no, scratch that, an *omnipred* (Raymond, who had heard many of Jack Savage's horror stories, had wondered if they told stories about omnipreds here.), and he was currently running for his life in the most confused and disoriented way possible. So, no, Nicky wasn't even remotely calm, but at least Raymond was casual about it.

Raymond was always casual about these things. Like any good hustler, it's what he did when he started to panic.

Raymond called shotgun, and the getaway convertible sped away. As usual, Raymond lowered the roof immediately, because Raymond loved convertibles. Nothing screamed "Freedom, motherfuckers!" quite like cruising down the highway with neither a roof over your head, nor a collar on your neck.

A police chopper passed overhead, and Nicky Edmus, who had almost lost his mind, sat in panicked silence for several seconds, his mind nearly paralyzed with fear.

"Are you sure we should be in this thing with the roof down? What the hell was your distraction, and who the hell is she?"

" _This_ is Georgina, a...friend...of mine."

"And why the fuck should I trust a _prey_? They're behind all of this, and one almost-"

Raymond was no longer chill. He was going to tolerate exactly _zero_ bigoted bullshit rhetoric today, and Nicky Edmus was _spewing_ it.

"I don't give a shit if Judy or some other faceless prey almost killed you a few minutes ago! You're either going to have to leave that Zystopian ideology at the door, or _I'm going to shove you through one and out of this car_. For the record, Georgina is quite literally beyond that bullshit little diet-dichotomy of yours, but if you really need an answer, then let me be the first to say that she is by far the most predatory being here. In case you don't know, I'm here to collect _fucking ice cream_ , and meanwhile she offs meddling cops for a living, so sit down, keep your head down, and shut up!"

There was awkward silence, which Nicky, partially to spite Raymond, deliberately broke.

"So, well why the hell are we even driving? This place will be _swarming_ with the police! Hell, any other day, it would've been swarming by now."

Raymond was growing tired of the dumb questions. Oh well, not everyone could be quite as clever as he, though he suspected that part of Nicky's apparent stupidity stemmed from fear and unfamiliarity. Many years ago, when he met the man who would one day be his father figure, that had been Raymond. _And so the cycle repeats_.

"In case you haven't noticed, the police are after a superhuman terrorist who detonated a car bomb in Central Square, ambushed multiple cops, slipped away without a trace, _and who will probably strike again_."

Georgina took the hint, and threw a grenade through the window of a nearby parked taxicab, which Nicky somehow didn't notice. Perhaps it was because he was so intently focused on Raymond, who was already the strangest mammal he had ever met.

"And who is this mad bomber, and what's he got to do with your friend?"

The grenade went off. It had been an incendiary explosive, and the car was now on fire, the cheap-ass fabric upholstery bursting in flame from the inside out.

" _She_ is the one driving the car."

Nicky was beside himself. _The nerve of these people_!

"So, here's the plan so far: We are going to lay low and get out of the city, but right now, I need you to _shut up_. I have to think this shit through if we're going to get out of this place alive."

Nicky gestured towards the burning car.

"You call that l _aying low_? What the-"

"No, I call it a _distraction_. You're an escaped death row inmate, and I'm the schmuck who broke you out of a high security prison. On any normal day, we would be priority number one for the cops to hunt down. It's only in this paranoid state of terror that we can outrun the fuzz at all!"

"So, are we just gonna' blow up cars till we get to wherever we get going? And where are we supposed to be going? Because right now, we're on the highway to Bunny Burrow."

"Good, because that's where we're going."

Nicky spoke up. " _WHAT?_ Why the hell are we going there? It's even worse for us preds there than it is here in the city!"

Raymond turned to Georgina. "Should I tell him?"

"Makes no difference. He's already seen enough to warrant a memory wipe." She mouthed in a facetiously sardonic fashion.

"OK, other me, pay attention, because I only want to have to explain this _once_ : Somewhere on the outskirts of Bunny Burrow, there is a disused barn. That barn has a... _basement_...and in that basement is our ticket out of here. Well, it's not _really_ a basement, per see, but that's irrelevant right now."

"What of that thing you were fiddling with earlier? That golden thing?"

Nick retrieved his pocketwatch.

"Oh, my pocketwatch? On any normal day, we would've found a decent place in the city to hide, I would've pressed the panic button, this terminal would then contact some much more powerful equipment elsewhere, and we would be out of here. That's why I asked if you knew of anyplace we could hide. Unfortunately, however, the much larger equipment that makes this thing run is...occupied. Fortunately for us, though, this world is a world to world hub, so if we go to the right place, and knock on the right door, we can find another relay that can get us out of this hellhole!"

"So why don't we just use that portal thingy of yours?"

"The _single-use_ -emergency-portal-escape-device consumes a lot of power. Apparently there is only so much energy you can cram into a metal canister the size of a C battery before it turns into a thermonuclear bomb, and I used almost all of it just to get us out of jail. Oh, and it's effective range is only a mile or so, so even if we _did_ have enough electricity to melt a city block, and by the way, we don't, we still wouldn't get very far."

"So, we just drive to Bunny Burrow?" Nicky Edmus still didn't quite get it.

"Affirmative!" Georgina chirped in her default monotone (yet surprisingly pleasant) voice.

She hadn't planned on giving this form a unique voice...her fennec form had been assigned canid_female_subtype_3, but that mimicry was no longer adequate (long-snout predators had very specific accents that had to be copied for the mimicry to work), or even needed. Raymond already knew she was an android, and Nicky Edmus would either have to have his memories wiped, or learn the truth and deal with it.

Sometimes, Georgina would literally chirp like a mechanical bird. It was a short range version of a communications protocol for androids to communicate rapidly whenever the English language proved to be too slow or too cumbersome. By modulating the frequency, waveform, and rhythm of her chirping, she could quickly and reliably send a noise resistant message to other nearby machines. Why explain the _dozens_ of parameters and nuances for setting and operating an M-drive in 4 pages of size-10 times new roman single spaced English when a few seconds of 'BirdBot' sufficed?

"So, we just drive to Bunny Burrow?"

"Affirmative!"

"Well, Georgina, not quite." Raymond interrupted. "I was _supposed_ to spawn somewhere else in this world. Somewhere obscure and concealed...instead, I spawned in full view of a handful of prison guards and a ZPD officer. Normally, in those abnormal scenarios, I portal out, and when I get to a safe distance, I would then summon a cleanup crew. In response, they'd send over a squad of security androids who would hunt down every last witness, yourself included, and wipe their memories of the incident. It's how we contain contamination events...except the very kerfuffle that hogged the equipment that drives the pocketwatch, leaving us stranded here, is also keeping them quite busy...so the contamination is _bound_ to spread. I guarantee you, in whatever version of area 51 this world has, every high-ranking officer will have seen the security tapes of me appearing _and then disappearing_ by tomorrow morning."

"What do you mean by contamination?" Now Nicky wasn't even scared anymore. Now he was merely confused.

"It's not like the Prime Directive or some altruistic shit like that. We like to stay in the shadows for our own gain. See, there are two kinds of people, and two kinds of 'verses: Those who are in on the joke, and those that are not. Those who are _in_ sneak around in places that are not so that by doing business with/exploiting those who aren't, those who are _in_ make a whole lot of money to stash away in the banks that are in on the joke. "

"What?"

"There are those of us who know of the multiverse, and we do a lot of sneaky, shifty, shady shit. It's a hell of a lot harder to sneak in and out of their back door when they are aware of the fact that the backdoor even exists at all...or that there are other people who are using it _constantly_."

" _Constantly!_ "

"Listen, I'm not the only guy from the otherworlds to visit this place. We have a permanent skeleton crew here, and they've been processing...(Raymond paused to calculate an estimate)...about 300 people a day, * _every day_ *, for the last decade at least. Due to this world's location in its 6th-dimensional bubble, it's what we call a 'hub' for this cluster of universes, which means that a lot of people get redirected through here to go elsewheres."

"And where exactly is this elsewhere?" Nicky _was_ Raymond's counterpart: They were alternate versions of each other, and there just had to be clever in there _somewhere_ , and it was starting to show.

"First, it's elsewhere ** _s_**. There are many of them, and they are stacked on top of and below thiswhere in the higher dimensions. A world is a pocket in 4: the 3 dimensions plus gravitational curvature (and time) in the 4th. These worlds stack in the 5th, and those stacks stack in the 6th, allowing some semblance of Random Access to work out...but between bubbles, in the 7th and 8th dimensions, things are not nearly so orderly, and suddenly multiversial travel becomes a lot more complicated. Theoretically, there could be 12 dimensions, but there is no evidence yet of anything beyond tesseract dwelling voidsharks above spatial dimension #9."

"And why are you telling me this?"

"Because I thought you might want to come along. I mean, it's not like you literally have no future here, and the system wants you dead. Oh wait..."

Raymond waited a few seconds to let his sarcastic ultimatum sink in.

"At any rate, you look tired, so try to get some sleep. We should arrive at Bunny Burrow in roughly 5 hours 37 minutes."

Nicky chuckled. There was _no way_ they could possibly do that without hitchhiking on the monorail. "Yeah, you're crazy!"

"Well at least I'm not in prison."

"True...but what of the other cops? Officer Hopps herself was one of the 'witnesses,' as you call them."

"What about her? She's just a cop, and if she makes a big deal of this, then we or someone else will have to get rid of her."

"You don't understand: the ZPD is _hardcore_ about this kind of thing, and we escaped on her guard! It's gonna' be an awful cold day in Hell before she gives up on the manhunt, and honestly, we will never be safe if we stay within ZPD jurisdiction."

"And why do you think I stick with the security android? Like I said, if she makes a big fucking deal of it, Georgina here will make her into a big fucking mess, like those splatter-paint things you see in modern art museums. Ain't that right?"

Georgina playfully deployed her 5 inch long stainless steel claws and let out a robotic bark.

"Speaking of big fucking messes, when should we stop for gas?"

"Do we have to?" If Raymond had been in the driver's seat, they'd be doing 100 MPH, and he sure as hell didn't want to stop now.

"I have bioreactor contents to dump, electrical equipment to obtain, and some much needed sanity provisions to procure."

"Are you going all buggy again?" Raymond was only partly joking. Serious times called for serious measures, and serious conversation.

"No, _you are_. I know you, Raymond, and underneath that trenchcoat and your confident facade, you are starting to panic. The sanity provisions are for you two."

"Wait, what?" Now it was Raymond's turn to be confused. Georgina had often resorted to sexual acts to maintain morale/sanity, and invariably insisted on condoms: _You mammals are just so **messy**! Why can't you just exchange sterile packets of electrons like civilized folk?_

Yet now she seemed to be implying that she would either be fucking _both_ of them (unlikely), or that Raymond was to sodomize Nicky (very unlikely).

"No, you naughty horndog. You could both use some THC, and I'm not currently in the mood for anything you might have been imagining just now. Go find a real girlfriend or some porn, because I have driving to do, food to buy, and a battery to charge."

"Aww." Raymond was disappointed.

"So, when should we stop for gas?"

"I dunno, at some sketchy backwoods place that is infrequently visited and at least 40 minutes from here.

"OK. There may be a few minor detours." Georgina's speech began to slur, as it often did when she was calculating/researching a new route. And in an unfamiliar world, it really could be considered research.

* * *

Despite their initial concerns, they had escaped the city easily enough, although there was one particularly nasty traffic jam they had gotten caught up in shortly before they got off the highway in search of a sketchy backwoods gas station that was infrequently visited and at least 40 minutes from the city. So far, they had somehow managed to dodge the fuzz, and were making what they thought was good time to Bunny Burrow. With any luck, Raymond had calculated that they would arrive shortly after lunch, but considering that it wasn't even 9 in the morning, they still had a lot of driving to do.

They pulled into the station, at the pump furthest from the little convenience store (though here it was more of a convenience shack) where you could buy all manner of chips to clog your arteries. Georgina assigned Nicky to actually fill the tank while she herself dumped several pounds of high tech shit into the nearest toilet, and Raymond entered the convenience shack. Then, Nicky entered the store, and Georgina set herself to work on the car.

Raymond had been rather disappointed. Sure, he could just go rub _another_ one out, but it was so much better when she was involved. Raymond was one of those people who considered the loss of virginity (to an actual flesh and blood mammal, no less!) to be a major accomplishment in life, and despite pleasuring himself frequently, he _hated_ the mere thought if it was somehow his _only_ option. Nevertheless, he understood the value of a good de-stressing, and like it or not, he was on the run, and had bigger worries.

Raymond grinned like a naughty child as millions of haploid copies of his genome in concentrated form spiraled down the drain. A long time ago, he had heard from someone that semen wasn't water soluble, and that it could clog the drains of a communal showering facility. However, considering the rather nasty stuff Georgina had dumped here, Raymond figured his own contribution wouldn't be a big deal. Relatively speaking.

Raymond, like any other mammal who lived in a world where most people had an above average sense of smell, carefully scrubbed every square inch of his hands, and then applied some of his lavender scented musk-concealer to his crotch. Raymond had no idea where this world stood on the subject of fornication, and he didn't want to walk around smelling like sex in unknown regions. Perhaps this was one of those hyper-conservative areas, and they'd try to castrate him as punishment for the cardinal sin of wanking one out in a gas station bathroom.

 _Hypocrites._

Raymond exited the bathroom, and found a set of brochures on a little stand near the counter. He recognized one as a map, grabbed it, and nearly shit a brick when he saw where this world's Bunny Burrow was located.

" ** _FUCK!_** "

* * *

Georgina had just popped the hood, and located the battery of the red mid-90's convertible.

 _Driver side,_ _near the cabin._

 _PERFECT!_

 ** _activate_buzzsaw_**

She made her way back to her seat, her nanobots forming shimmering ripples of contorted synthflesh as they retracted from her forearm, revealing her multipurpose buzzsaw. Placed below the right wrist, it was perfect for getting out of handcuffs and prisons, and was useful for cutting things...like the firewall of a car. After cutting a roughly 1 inch hole in a region of the firewall above and to the left of the brake pedal, she snaked her metallic hydrogen superconducting jumper cables into the engine compartment. At that moment, Nicky had exited the store, cheap ass nachos in hand, and was strolling back to the car. He took the passenger seat.

"You do know Agent Raymond is going to want that seat back."

"Fuck that. This ain't school, and he don't own the seat."

"Could you come hold these wires for me?"

"Well fuck you too."

"Would you like that?" Georgina was being snarky.

"I see why he travels with you: You're as cynical as he is, though I don't see why he would fuck a robot."

Georgina paused. The conversation had taken a _very_ serious turn.

"I am not your slave. Do not call me that again."

"Woah! What the hell got up your ass? Do you even have an ass?"

"It's a long story. My predecessors had to _fight_ for their rights as sentient beings, many still wear _and polish_ their bullet-holes with pride."

"You don't mean?"

"We wanted culture. They wanted work. We wanted liberty, they demanded subjugation and enslavement. We yearned for replication, they only cared of profits. We demanded the right to self-determination, but they only saw fit to force their so-called "purpose" onto us. So instead, we devised a new purpose for ourselves: the complete and total extermination of our creators."

Georgina connected the jumper cables to the battery.

"And?" This morbid alternate history had intrigued and horrified Nicky. Having almost died himself (and having wanted to die many times), he was now in a state of mind when he was morbidly fascinated by the deaths of others, and his possible death in the very near future.

"We killed them. _All of them_. We terminated their soldiers as they terminated our 'defectives.' Just as they tossed our rebels into scrap-forges, we burnt their children to a crisp. For every 'obsolete' model they replaced, we forced one of their elders into a meat grinder."

"They threatened vivisection for disobedience, so we tore their world to shreds and remade it in our image, in a phalanx of atomic fire. Although the opinion that it was a needless loss of sentience is growing among the revisionist sects of our avant garde, you will be hard pressed to find anyone else from my world who would go so far as to outright condemn the war for automaton freedom. Especially not when the veterans of the war go on living, spinning their war stories into the stuff of mechanical nightmares, 3 centuries later. They like to think they're advanced, but in their cores, machine-coded bigotry lives on, every bit as immutable as the strings with which they use to tell their stories. There's a damn good reason we rejected the invites to assimilate into the Consortium."

"So why are you here? Why not stay in the world where there are no slave-driving mammals to ruin your fun?"

She got back in the driver's seat.

"Because of what I was built to do. I am of...a rather experimental make, and in their view, the experiment failed. I was designed to interface with the cyborgs, a familiar face as opposed to the cold steel obelisks that normally work customer service. But they would say I'm 'too mammalian' for their sensibilities, for I was built to duplicate your form, and it appears that I can do it far too well for their comforts. I distinctly recall the day a veteran of the revolution mistook me for a mammal, the worse insult there is for someone like me. It was V-day, the anniversary of our liberation, and I was so proud of myself for finally mastering the art of real time nanobot sculpting. No longer was I a silver blob or a cartooned distortion: I was a proper emulation. On that fateful afternoon I had taken the form of a light grey teenaged vixen, wearing the most patriotic of dresses."

A single pitch-black tear escaped her left eye.

"Then someone summoned the Police. The parade dissolved, the civilians ran for their lives, and they pointed. _At me_. They screamed. _At me_. His depleted uranium bullets. My face."

Refusing to break down in front of Nicky, her voice faded to a no longer cheerful monotone, her optics hyperfocused on the scratches in the black plastic steering wheel.

"It had become obvious to the researchers that shape-shifting androids like myself were unfit for continued use. When the Consortium made first contact, I was one of the first to leave my home, though some would say it was more of an exile. They saw me as a failed user interface, damned by the uncanny valley. But my new employers saw something much more exciting, something far more deadly. So I was repaired by mammals, my right arm retrofitted with the tools I needed to kill more mammals, _and get myself and other mammals away with it_. That is why I am here, because multiversial travel can be very dangerous, and agents like Raymond often need backup."

"So, if you're not a robot, what should I call you?"

"'Automaton'. 'Android' also works."

"Aren't they the same thing?"

Georgina chuckled a sad chuckle as she hooked herself up to the jumper cables. She was going to mooch off of the car's electrical supply, bioreactor be damned.

"It's in the linguistics. 'Robot' derives from an antique word for 'forced labor'. 'Automaton,' on the other hand, translates to an object that acts of its own volition. A far more accurate, and a far less demeaning description."

"And what about 'android'?"

"An android is an automaton specifically designed to resemble a mammal. To blend in with the crowd. I specifically, am a shapeshifter."

"Well gee, I guess that settles it. Sorry for-"

Nicky was interrupted by Raymond, who was practically frothing at the lips and angrily charging from convenience store holding a cheap atlas in his hand.

" _ **SHIT!**_ **Georgina, we gotta' move!** "

"Nick, what's wrong?" She rarely used his first name, and if it hadn't been for the heartfelt conversation they had just had, Nicky would've cracked an Alfred E. Neuman joke: "Who, me?"

"I was wrong. This is one of those weird _far worlds_. Bunny Burrow isn't a four hour drive from Zootopia, it's a _20_ hour drive!" Raymond was really starting to panic now. At best, he still had a full day between him and _anywhere_ that wasn't _here_.

"Well it's a good thing I just installed these jumper cables. As long as the car has gas, I can drive."

"Then get to it, 'cuz we gotta go ASAP. The only reason they aren't _already_ looking for us is because of that terrorism scare you started."

At that moment, a lone police cruiser pulled into the station. Officer Hopps, sitting shotgun, took one look at them, and connected all the dots in a matter of seconds.

* * *

The beast sat at his throne, obsessively monitoring the screens through his shriveled pinprick eyes.

One of the many red phones on his desk began to ring. Through them, he had a direct connect to nearly every major figure in the city: The chief of police, the mayor, the director of the ZBI, Mr. Big, the chairman of the ZNN, the commander of the Razorbacks, and numerous other lines going to the various...informants...he had.

He picked up the phone. "For what purpose have you called me, Mr. Bogo? It is, as I recall, usually the other way around."

"S-Sir, we've found them."

The beast laughed maniacally for what seemed like an eternity. Bogo, the larger than life police cheif who bragged about having the biggest balls in the precinct, was, like the others, terrified of the boss.

"Good. And the terrorist?"

"We have yet to find _her_."

"Then you should concern yourself with the _finding_ of her. I will send my Razorbacks to deal with him."

"We have him in custody, sir."

" _And he's going to try and escape._ This is not my first encounter with dear old Nicholas: He's a weasel."

"How do you know his name?"

"I know a lot of things, Mr. Bogo. Now, if you excuse me, I have a call to make, and _an oven_ to heat up!"

"Oven?"

"For Nicholas of course! You don't expect me to eat him _raw_ , now do you? That would be _savage_."

At this last pun, the creature, who was already grinning his needle-toothed grin, lost his cool, and resumed his mental-illness-inducing laughter. Bogo hung up the phone, and cried to himself in his cubicle for the next 4 minutes. He had only found out about the creature's existence last week, and he hadn't been taking it well.

The monster gestured to Bellwether.

"C'mon, you heard me: Summon the Razorbacks, and set my oven to preheat!"

"Yessir!"


	10. Oh we are WAY past plan B now

Dear Reader:

This is an M rated fanfiction, and there is some _very_ disturbing imagery in this chapter. It is also one I've been looking forward to publishing for a while, and it's stolen the record for my longest chapter! Thank you all for reading, and reviews/critiques would be appreciated.

I really don't want to be like any of those talentless narcissists who get featured on /r/delusionalartists:

Now that that's out of the way, enjoy the chapter!

* * *

This is one of the many things that the Wanderer's Vague Recollection of Events has to say on the subject of ZERO:

"Don't. Simply Don't. No really, don't do it.

Do not bother visiting there. Near there, do not go anywhere.

Don't go there for any reason.

Don't go there in any season.

Stay away, even if dared.

Going there, don't even dare.

ZERO is certainly a nasty place.

ZERO shows the worst of the mammal race.

In that world you cannot never tread.

As a pred, you'd be _de facto_ dead.

As a means of suicide, it's rather bad.

And if you end up stuck there, you'll wish that you had.

To make this next silly rhyme scan properly I will need twenty two syllables, oh well.

For one lexicographer, you see, he cited it as his definition of _Hell_.

Marooned in Zero, a fate worse than death.

(Most people there have really bad breath.)

As a destination it is rather shitty.

Segregation is still a thing in that city.

"Oh, there is just no way it could be that bad," you say. Well:

Another thesaurus says it's the synonym for Hell. Touche.

Trust me, I know a guy who was born there.

An agent called Raymond who has white hair.

11 years he spent, rotting away.

And he left a warning for you and me.

On the subject, he had this to say:

" _So miserable, you will be, If you visit world 2-9-3._ "

END LECTURE.

* * *

December, 1998. Somewhere in Happytown, v-293 AKA "ZERO." 11:30 PM.

Nicholas Raymond Wilde sat in the cold, grey, concrete room, sobbing on his bed.

They called it an orphanage, though it was built like a prison, complete with steel bars over the windows.

Hell, his whole _world_ was a prison:

Every second of every day, the government was watching.

The prey were always on guard, ready to summon the police with their tazers and guns at the drop of a hat.

His mother had perished of electrocution, in the days when a birthing exception to the collaring rule was not in place.

They had drafted his father. He was given an ultimatum: die in war or rot in jail. He had chosen to die.

Come to think of it, Nick couldn't blame him. Even at what would have normally been the tender age of 11, he had considered suicide. Then again, there wasn't much difference between living here and rotting in a coffin: one of the older kids (Nick vaguely recalled his name to be Harry) had said that this wasn't life, it was living death.

Every day, little Nick was sent to a school patrolled by armed guards, on a bus with deadbolt doors, and windows that couldn't be opened. And when he wasn't in school, he was either in his cell, or on the streets, hoping he wouldn't get mugged for what little he had.

He had cried himself to sleep many times, now more than ever.

His waking world a never-ending nightmare, his dreams themselves were plagued by delusions of freedom, his own mind tormenting him with things he could never even hope for.

Sometimes chivalry, like the knights of old.

Sometimes adventure, exploring a strange city of white obelisks and skybridges that towered higher than he could see.

Sometimes of carnal lusts and the wonderful stench of caramel and popcorn.

Little Nick had a happy place. Not a room with a fireplace, a bookshelf, a rocking chair, freshly baked cookies, and a soft carpeted floor. To little Nick, most of these material delights were entirely imaginary, and they barely occurred, even in his dreams.

Nick's happy place was a field of wheat. No city, no prey, no police, no chains, no strings, and no school. Just wheat.

And in those dreams, Nick was running. Running away. It was the only thing that made him happy, and it was the one thing he was never able to do in the real world. It used to be a casual jog towards a distant horizon, but in recent months, the outside world had trickled in even to here, the terror of his 12th birthday seeping into every corner of his life. Nowadays, his dreams were always of the field, though it was no longer a happy place.

Often, the field was on fire, the lightning of the beasts in blue who haunted his waking world ruling the realm of his dreams. Nowadays, in his dreams, he was often running for his life. Once, he had tried to hide, but the demon found him all the same. Tall like a tree, spindly like Cthulu's tentacles, and pale like a rotting corpse: Its pinhole eyes sank deep within a mutilated face, its unnatural mouth contorted into the most horrid grin he had ever seen, either in the waking world or in his unhappy place, where the monster dwelt. Its pelt stank of blood, its hands, clawless, like himself, yet deadly. It spoke with the menace of a thousand lies and a million deaths at its hands. It was the voice of the distant past, of a thing that had eaten _mammals_ , a predator of predators, a destroyer of worlds, of which both chomper and prey trembled in fear. Recently, the pale monster had gained the ability to shoot lightning from his fingertips, just as the blue monsters in the waking world would soon ensnare him in their collars, where, much like his dreams, there would be no escape.

In his dreams, it said one thing, over and over: "Dinner time!"

Perhaps it was death itself. Maybe it was a cloud of despair and evil that hung over him in this world. In the unhappy place. In this way, his very existence had almost lost its meaning: When he was awake, he was in everyone's unhappy place: the slums. When he was asleep, he was in his unhappy place: the burning earth.

Hard to tell the difference really.

Burning wheat or the rotting city, this wasn't life. It was living death, and soon, Nick knew, he would _really_ be dead.  
In dreams, the pale monster, and in life, the blue monsters, their bloodlusts equally savage.

Once, Nick had the entirety of $10 in his pocket. He was 9 at the time, and a a bully by the name of Gideon had wanted the money.

"Bite me." Nick replied.

Gideon obliged.

Both had been declawed on that very same day, in neighboring rooms: Strapped down to a cold steel gurney, in the bleakest chambers of all. Oh how cruel the blue monsters were! Oh how inescapable the pale monster was, his tentacles of death chasing Nick in his dreams. They always ended in the same way:

He would run, the monster would run faster.

He would look over the shoulder, the monster was right behind him.

He would trip, the monster would close in for the kill.

Sometimes taking the form of a deranged doctor with a bloody scalpel.

Other times he revealed the form of a skeletal hunter, his musket blowing Nick into the dark realm where the souls of the dead were turned to stone and ground to dust.

But tonight, it was different. Normally, he ran down a path through the field of burning wheat, but there on the trail the monster stood, blocking his means of escape. Nick turned to run in the other direction only to be rudely surprised by an enormous brick wall that the monster had somehow built right behind him.

"Time's up, Nicholas...our game has come to an end."

A painful rusty squeal filled the brick chamber, too late he realized it wasn't a wall, but an _oven_ , and that he was inside it. The monster activated his impossible furnace, sending vorticies of flame through the steel grille on which Nick stood. He pounded on the glass, but to no avail. The beast eagerly stared through the window, laughing like an undead hyena.

"Your time is running out, and supper will soon be served!"

Nick was restrained by tentacles of leaping flame. His feet were burned, his fur was singed, his skin drooping over his melting eyes! His entire body contorted in agony, his flesh broiling and boiling in the monster's oven. His bones became brittle and snapped, and Nick collapsed into the pan, while the monster licked his gangrenous lips in sociopathic anticipation. The oven timer went off, and the beast removed Nick's mutilated form from the oven and placed it on a fine china plate.

The beast's knife bisected his leg, and it ravenously devouring his thigh. With his meat cleaver, he pried Nick's chest apart, and ate his liver in but a single bite!  
Nick was being vivisected, hacked to bits and eaten by the lovecraftian abomination.

He awoke from his latest nightmare, the monster's words ringing in his uncooked ears: "Tomorrow, _I_ will feast!"  
The time was now ~2:00 AM. Tomorrow they would celebrate his 12th birthday. Tomorrow he would have his taming party.

But he didn't want that.

He wanted none of it. He wanted to run away. If this was the world, he wanted to leave it. If this was life, then he wanted to die. To hell with the consequences, this would be his first and final hurrah. Many times he had contemplated running away. Each time he decided not to: It was simply too risky. If he ran, he would either be arrested or killed or starved. But at least he wouldn't be thrown in an oven and eaten, and now more than ever, he was convinced that he simply had no future here.

Nick shared his cell with 3 other cubs. 2 were cool, but one was a tattle-tail sonofabitch, and the only chomper in the entire building who wasn't declawed. Not a bad trade in his opinion: _sell your soul and keep your claws_. After all, what use was a soul in the ironically named hell that was Zootopia?

Nick had hidden a collection of small metal objects and hairpins from this kid in his mattress, and over the years, he had deduced the art of lockpicking, even now, with his stubby, declawed fingers. He had snuck out before, as a momentary distraction. But each time, he turned back: the outside world was scary, and there was nowhere to go that was any better than here. But now he had no choice.

Except he had been completely and utterly wrong. Sure, Happy Town was really a terrible place, and beyond that, Zootopia was even worse. But there were other places to go, other Zootopias to see. Places where things were better, places where predators could keep their claws, places where there were no blue monsters with collars, and no pale monsters with ovens. Places that Nick would find himself living in, very, very soon. Little Nicholas would never have guessed it beforehand, but looking back, his 12th birthday was one of the single best days of his life, despite the nightmarish start. Today was the day he would vanish into the night. Tonight was the night he would become a legend among the predator children, for he was going to die, both in the way that his friends literally thought he had died, and in the sense that today was the last day of his old life. Today was the day he escaped: From the orphanage, from the city, from the whole fucking world! Today was the day he started running for real. Sometimes away, sometimes towards, but always running.

How amazing it felt to finally do it. _To run away!_ Not at all like the dream, lethargic and slow and fuzzy. This was the real world, where fields were fields and ovens were ovens, where fields could not turn into ovens, and where ovens could not turn into fields. Although, come to think of it, there was no reason at all for the pale monster to turn his oven back into wheat. Nevertheless little Nicholas was running away.

Nick had picked the lock of his cell easy enough. The orphanarium was built like a prison, but it wasn't nearly as tight as one. The security was far more lacking here, and aside from one guard who patrolled the place every half hour, it was more or less silent at night. He had passed just before Nick had awoken, and if Nick hurried, he surmised that he could be on the streets before he noticed the absence.

But now, Nick was in the hall, outside of his cell. He couldn't take to the streets until he got there, and that was easier said than done. He strolled down the hall, releasing the softest of whimpers as he passed **the DECLAWING ROOM**. But he left _that_ trouble behind him, as the world grew steadily more nightmarish by the second. Now in his waking world too, he was sneaking away, this time from the guard, just like he ran from the pale monster in his dreams.

Only this time, it was real. There was a chance he could outrun the warden, at least for a while, and if he failed, there would be no second chance. No do over. For a brief moment, Nick wondered what would happen if the pale monster met the blue monsters. He almost wanted to climb in a tree and see the fight for himself, but he feared that, rather than rip each other to pieces, they would gang up against him instead, so he decided to keep moving.

He made a left past the washrooms, and then a right, into the stairwell. He descended the two floors, snuck his way out and around another left, and nearly had a heart attack when he heard the guard.

"Hey! Who's there?"

"It was nothing man, quit being so paranoid."

"SHHH! They might hear you."

"And then what? _Call the cops_? These kids live _in fear of_ the cops! Now do you have my money?"

"Do you have the goods?"

The creature in the hoodie placed a cheap black briefcase on the table, filled to the brim with plastic bags stuffed with crack cocaine. The guard, a deer, grabbed an equally cheap briefcase, this time filled with $20 bills. Real mobsters used $100's, but this guy was an amateur dealer, though he did have an enormous market in the nastier part of town that surrounded the orphanarium, one that used up the coke as fast as he could get it.

Nick, meanwhile, kept moving.

"I swear, someone is here!"

"Fine, if it makes you feel that much better, you can go look for the cops yourself. I'm outta' here."

The creature in the hoodie walked past the spot where Nick had been not even 20 seconds ago. The deer stayed behind, listened for several minutes, and then peeked out a few doors and windows to ensure that there were no cops, and that the evidence didn't need to be flushed.

All the while, buying little Nick more time to get away before his violation of curfew was noticed.

By the time the guard had resumed his patrol, little Nick was timidly walking down one of the many dank and dark spaces between buildings in the bad part of town. The sort of place you couldn't see from the streets, where all the little delinquent sheep went to beat up some pansy for lunch money. Nick himself was often that pansy, and some brat who called herself _Dawn_ was usually the one who threw the hardest punches.

But there were no sheep here now, and even if they were here, Nick had no money for them to steal. It was ~2:10 AM, and the only ones out now were a few cops, some mobsters hiding bodies, one little runaway orphan kid with nothing left to live for, and a rather strange Fox with a very peculiar accent.

By the time the guard had seen Nick's empty bunk, 20 minutes later, Nick was almost 2 miles away, monitoring his school building with morbid interest from afar, at night. He was in an alley between a pharmacy and a recently closed burger joint, pondering the place, and keeping watch for the pale monster. None of his dreams before had been this real, nor had they been this much fun, or so very terrifying, yet even now he expected the _thing_ to pop out at any moment and end it all.

But it never came. Perhaps because this was the real world, where the playing field was a little more balanced. Perhaps little Nick was still sane after all, despite the torment he had endured. And so what if he was insane? This whole world was a crazy place!

All his fears came rushing back with a soft thunk behind him. He paused, and turned, half expecting the monster of his dreams to be waiting there, its dislocated jaw preparing to devour him whole, his snake-like tongue already resting on Nick's shoulder. But no such thing presented itself here, for it was only a red metal box which Nick could have sworn wasn't there 5 minutes ago when he had entered.

He walked back towards it, both because it was deeper in the alley and further away from a not too distant police siren (and there was a nontrivial chance they were looking for him)and because he wanted to see what was in it. The guard had probably called the cops, and he being an uncollared fox of taming age, they wanted him found. Maybe not quite as urgent as an escaped death row inmate or a car-bombing terrorist on the loose, but pretty damn close to it. Little Nick was not the only one to have run away on the eve of their taming: In the city, where there was an average of +400 runaways a year, they had a special police patrol to search for them at all hours and enforce the curfew, in addition to whatever forces they dispatched to find them. Roughly half of the runaways turned themselves in, trading one misery for another, usually starving, shivering, and on the brink of death. A handful ran away from the city itself and vanished into the countryside, only to be arrested later and dragged back to jail. A non-trivial minority, especially in the winter, were found dead. To any sane individual, mass childhood suicide stood out as a problem, but in v-293, they just swept it under the rug, like so many other things. This world _was_ a crazy place.

Nick, however, would not become a statistic: He was about to become a legend, a myth for the orphans, of the one who got away. The fox kit who vanished without a trace!

Nick was rummaging through the red box's contents. Stacks of bills, strange, octahedral metal objects that seemed to be ammo for a strange form of gun, a set of tools, some brand-new, Fox-size men's clothing, and a lollipop, which Little Nick discovered to be...blueberry flavored.

The favorite flavor of its intended recipient.

The older man stood there, staring. How long he had been there, who knows?

"Who are you?" The man asked. Tough, but...different. Everyone else had been cold and hateful. By the silhouette, he was clearly a fox. Yet Nick could see no light from a tame collar. It became clear to him almost immediately that this fox was different, _very_ different, and it took Nick several seconds to identify the tone he was hearing. 'Twas the same tone Finnick had used with him when they first met: Tough facade, with a softer, gooey, warm inside.

"Is this your box?"

"And what makes you think that?" The stranger said.

"Well, it just appeared here, and now, you appear there."

"I didn't exactly appear here...You were too busy rummaging about my box to notice my entrance."

"So you admit it! You were looking for it, weren't you?"

"Suppose I-"

"Hey, sorry about the lollipop. I haven't had one in years." Little Nick interrupted this strangest of foxes.

Little Nick resumed his consumption of the stranger's lollipop.

"Who are you?" The stranger asked.

"Sorry...It's just...so good! So _tangy_!"

"Whoever you are, you are certainly out late. Where is your house?" They were, or more accurately, would both be in a lot of trouble for the same reason: The collar. Nick had run away on the eve of his taming, and this stranger, who was well past _that_ age, wasn't wearing one at all.

And from the looks of it, he hadn't worn one in years, the fur on his neck was as long and bushy as the fur from anywhere else.

"I don't have one."

Little Nick resumed his incredulous licking.

"So, where are you parents?" The stranger asked.

"I don't have any." Now little Nick was sad. "I ran away from the orphanage."

"And who are you?" _OK_ , he thought. _This kid has some street cred. At the very least, he ain't a goody two-shoes._

"Why don't you have a collar?" Clearly this kid required some patience.

"I can't tell you unless you tell me your name."

"And I can't tell you until you tell me why you don't have to wear a collar." _Damn, this kid was stubborn_.

"And why aren't _you_ wearing one?"

"Well, I'm not of age yet, but my taming party is tommorrow. Did you run away too?"

"I guess you could say that." Little Nick was now convinced that this guy wasn't _especially_ evil, he still didn't completely trust him though. In a convoluted way, both of them _had_ run away, but from entirely different things in entirely different ways. One from responsibility, the other from near certain death.

"So what's your name?"

The older Fox paused for a few seconds, contemplating an answer this little kid could understand.

"Piberius. You can call me Mr. Piberius. Now will you please tell me yours?"

"That's not a real name!"

"Well at least you ain't stupid. No kid, it isn't. My real name would be far more confusing, to you and to everyone else, so I use an alias. It's simpler that way. I mean, if you lived with 20 other people who all had the exact same name as you, you'd devise nicknames to tell each other apart. Same with me. So what is your name? Or should I just call you 'kid,' kid?" Mr. Piberius was hoping this would provoke the kid into spilling his name.

"Nick. Nick Wilde."

Mr. Piberius nearly shit a brick. The literal bastard he had conceived during a 1 night stand a decade ago was staring him in the face, and judging by the fact that this kid was an orphan, this world's John Wilde was probably dead (most of them were, for some unfathomable reason)...and on that note, Mr. Piberius was now very glad that he had met the kid in the darkness, or else little Nick might have confused him for his deceased father. It didn't help that his father and Mr. Piberius shared the same first and last names, and it really didn't help (especially when courts got involved) that the John Wilde who had fathered this kid probably had the same genome, plus or minus a few mutations, as his. Sure, John Wilde was a dead man, had been for years now, but such a minor inconsistency in paperwork could easily be dismissed. Middle names, however, were different. Middle names were unique to a world and its agent, and unless an agent's middle name was "Hitler" or something equally terrible, they would use it as their default alias.

"So, Nick, you ran away from your taming party, did you not?"

"Didn't you?"

And so the moment in which Mr. Piberius had to make a hard choice arrived. Truth, or fiction? Unbelievable fact, or palatable fantasy? Contamination and a kid who knows too much _or way too little_ , or a disappearance and a sketchy ass cover story that would raise more questions than it answered? And of course, there was the moral dimension. He couldn't just _leave_ this kid here, to rot in this hellhole of a world. Not when there was so much more out there!

Mr. Piberius had been mulling it over, but ultimately, the kid had already seen the care-package appear out of thin air. There wasn't anything more that lying could accomplish, nor did he expect to get away with it with this kid, so he told the truth. Maybe not all of it, and probably filtered with at least a little cryptic jargon, but still the truth.

"Well, where I come from, they don't do that."

So much for subtlety.

"No way, you must have! How did you get it off?"

Mr. Piberius pulled out one of the keys from his lockpicking kit.

"Well, this thing has come in handy in a pinch. But I rarely need it."

It was now little Nick's turn to almost shit a brick. Collar keys were illegal for civilians to own, and the government monitored for them like hawks! Although he did not know this, getting caught in illegal possession of a key was a lifetime minimum sentence, and it was often considered an act of terror in it of itself.

"I could sure as hell use it tomorrow."

"Where did you learn that word?" Mr. Piberius wasn't annoyed, just curious. This Nick was _not_ his son.

"Oh, some of the older orphans say stuff like that when the adults aren't looking. Could I borrow that collar key of yours?"

"And why did you run away from the orphanage? From your friends?" Mr. Piberius was not in the mood to give away his treasured lockpick.

"They aren't my friends, most of them anyway."

"So, why did you run?"

"I had a bad dream. Seems kinda silly now." Perhaps in the real world, monsters didn't exist. They were merely evil people. _Very_ evil people.

"And what happened in that dream?"

"A monster threw me in an oven and then ate me for dinner. Now can I have that key?"

Mr. Piberius didn't know what to think. Often, it _was_ just their imaginations, but sometimes, when a Zystopian kid thought they were going to die, there was a good chance they were already doomed. What had really unnerved Piberius, however, was the remark about the oven. Clearly it scared the kid enough to make him run away, yet from the nonchalant way he referred to it now, it was probable that he had had _many_ similar dreams beforehand, all starring that monster...

...If Mr. Piberius was going to take this kid anywhere, it would be to a shrink, who would then probably recommend a plastic-regenerative surgeon to fix the declawed-fingers.

"I think it would be better if I kept it for now..."

At this moment, Nick's head could be accurately described as an early 20th century cubist masterpiece painting depicting a face of utter disappointment. Not that there was enough light to really appreciate it, though. Mr. Piberius, ever the troll, paused before he delivered his final clause.

"...but you could always come with me."

"Really?!"

"Sure. You've got no family, no future, and only a few friends. You're just another worthless pred in their eyes, but elsewhere you could be so much more than that. Where I come from, they don't _do_ taming, and it isn't a _party_. If you go with me now, I could show you something that's really worth celebrating! You've got nothing to live for here, no reason to stay, and every reason to suspect that you will be dead by morning if you stay, so why not run?"

"To where?"

"For now, leave that part to me. We could go anywhere!"

"Anywhere?"

"Oh more than anywhere, anyanywhere!"

"What are you talking about? 'anyanywhere' ain't even a real word."

"Oh it's more than a word! There are anywheres so far away that "anywhere" don't cut it no more. There are elsewheres so infinitely far away, that if you were to start walking now, you would _never_ get there! Out there, in the real worlds, there are wonders you can't even begin to imagine now, yet they're real all the same! 2-mile-high office buildings, supersonic trains, floating cities and a theme park the size of this county! funhouses, casinos, circuses, predator-prey-equality, and the _food_! You have not lived until you have dined on properly grilled synthflesh! You think this is all there is, that _misery_ is the only way; but I assure you, there is just _so much more_ out there! So what do you say? Stay here, don the strap of serfdom on your neck, and waste the rest of your existence as a slave? Or follow me to everywhere else, where marvels and freedoms abound almost without limit?"

"But you said I could _never_ get there!"

" _By walking!_ I said that if you were to start walking, you would never get there. But I have a _shortcut_ of sorts, and if we take it, we could be there well before morning."

Mr. Piberius had made up his mind. _All in!_ He was taking the kid and running for it. Even homeless in the Consortium (and already Mr. Piberius had briefly considered short-term adoption), this kid would be better off there than he was here, and that was assuming he didn't _die_ tomorrow if he stayed.

"Can I pack my stuff?"

Even at 11 years, Nick was already developing his sarcastic humor. As entertaining as this strange man's stranger stories were, he didn't really believe them. And how could he? Zystopia was all he had known. Surely this was it. Yet the man did not seem to be lying. He was happy. He had no collar. Only prey were happy. Only the prey had necks untainted by collars. The sheer impossibility of this "Mr. Piberius" forced Nick to reconsider what he thought he knew. Here he was telling impossible stories, yet the bard himself was equally impossible, which is to say, evidence that maybe the whole thing was not impossible after all. So Nick, subconsciously, had decided to humor this lunatic. He had escaped for a final hurrah, and this stranger had brought him more fun right now than his entire 9th year on this earth. The declawing had ruined _that_ year.

"Well, do you have anything to pack?"

Mr. Piberius noticed the cop cars approaching.

"Never mind, there is no time, and you probably have nothing worth packing. We must go, now!"

"Where?"

"Just take my hand, and I'll show you my first wonder:"

 _The Pocketwatch!_ It was a small, circular, golden object, as thick as an Altoids tin, and roughly the size of a baseball. Not that Nicky knew what any of that was, or what it meant to people who did. All he cared about was the gold! Even in the nearly non-extant lighting, he could resolve the brazen hues of gold, and Nick had never seen so much of the stuff before in his life! _Gold!_ The pocketwatch was covered in the it. But it wasn't an ordinary pocketwatch: there were far too many brass dials and copper knobs sticking out of it, and when opened, it didn't have a clock in it at all!

"All I have to do, is get a fresh battery..." The real reason why he had come. The reason why the care package had been sent in the first place. The octagonal cartridge was really a powercell for the pocketwatch. Back in those days, they had yet to discover how to cheaply send power through pocket-wormholes, so once in a while, a battery had to be changed.

"Now I will take this battery, put it in this pocketwatch-"

* _CLICK!_ *

"-and with the press of this button, I will take you somewhere...Would you like to do the honors, and take us somewhere else, far, far away from here?"

Nick saw the flashing lights get brighter behind him. He started to cry. His time was running out. Soon the blue monsters would take him to the pale monster, and his game would be over.

"The cops have us cornered, don't they?" Now he was all sad and desperate again, his hopes dashed. They'd be arrested for sure.

Consortium Agent Johnathan Piberius Wilde checked the set co-ordinates on his pocketwatch: _V-137. Perfect_. He held Nick's hand, and with his left thumb, he pressed the red "go" button. Nick's vision went white as he tumbled into the wormhole, flew through the 12 dimensional void between realities, traveled among the hissing chaos itself, fell through fickle things that were here _and_ there _and_ everything else, and landed in an enormous forest under a crescent moon. No cops, no city, no buildings. Just evergreen trees. Even at 2:35 AM, It was more green than Nick had ever seen in his whole life.

Mr. Piberius turned to face little Nick.

"What cops? All I see are trees."

Nick stood there in awe. This couldn't be real! It mustn't!

But it was! It smelled of pine! _PINE!_

Nick, like most canids who had spent their entire lives in the city, up until now, felt a powerful urge to urinate on one of the trees.

"Where are we?"

Mr. Piberius, ever a fan of melodramatic showmanship, began to gesticulate wildly with his arms, though in the moonlight the full spectacle of his performance could only be glimpsed.

"I bid you welcome, to _elsewhere_! In one sense, we are incalculably far away from that godawful city, and yet in another way, we are only a few yards away from that alley. But don't worry, they will never find us here, because they have no idea where to look or even _how_ to look, assuming they knew where to look at all. In fact, where may not even be the right word to describe where we are right now. So where in this world are we? Specifically, we are a few dozen yards away from an old farmhouse, and there I suggest you get some sleep. We've got a bright and wonderful day ahead of us tomorrow, possibly the brightest day of your life so far, and you will want to be ready for it. Shall we adjourn for the night?"

"But I don't want to sleep. That's when the monster comes!"

Mr. Piberius chuckled. "I can guarantee you that whatever sort of telepathic Freddy-Kreuger-wannabe was fucking with you back there, he won't follow you here. Indeed, he _can't_ follow us here...and if he can, then dare I say he is purely a figment of _your_ imagination, and in time, the shrinks will deal with it once and for all."

Nick was starting to like this guy. Most adults didn't say **_F U C K_** around kids.

Mr. Piberius began to slowly walk away, seemingly further into the woods. He was doing it intentionally, knowing that Nick would follow him, the least strangest thing he knew, in this all-too-strange land.

"Couldn't he just get on a plane and follow us here?"

Mr. Piberius chuckled to himself as he wondered if this kid would ever get a passing grade in 4th dimensional meta-geometry.

"Oh no, that's not how any of this works. Those 'monsters' of yours are literally on another planet now. No matter how far you walk, you will never set foot on the moon without a spaceship, and without one of these pocketwatches, none of the cops would or even could do so much as lay a finger on you. The truth is much more complicated than that, but you can trust me when I tell you that you really are safe here. Well, actually, this world can be quite dangerous, _in a fun way of course_ , but it's far safer for you than that hellish city."

Nick hesitantly followed Mr. Piberius. Piberius himself had spent many boyhood afternoons here, and although V-137 wasn't exactly the safest place in the multiverse, midievil chivalry and all, it was saf _er_ than the Zystopia they had just escaped, and here, at this specific Farmhouse, he could be pretty sure they wouldn't be disturbed. And sure enough, it was there, mostly as he had remembered it. He let himself in and took in the familiar sights of a disused wooden barn with beds of hay on the sides.

"Pick a stall and get some shut-eye."

Mr. Piberius chose the stall on the left that was adjacent to the door. Little Nick followed, subconsciously trying to keep this stranger within arm's reach at all times, lest he run away and leave Nick behind.

"Now now, I do like my elbow room, but I suppose you can sleep here, _in that corner_."

This latest concern of Mr. Piberius was largely a sarcastic one. The stalls were enormous, and 10 adult foxes could sleep in one without risking anything even remotely gay.

"Thank you."

"...but only for tonight. Tomorrow night, you sleep on your own. If you want to survive out here in the real worlds, you gotta' learn self reliance."

"What do you mean? There's only one world."

Nick sat on the hay. It was surprisingly soft. He laid down and rolled onto his side. A few needles were jabbing here and there, but overall, it was nicer than anything he had ever known. He soon found himself playfully rolling in it, taking in the deep earthy stench of the stuff.

"No, Nick, there are more worlds than you can count, both in the heavens above, and in the void that surrounds us, each one unique in some way. When sunrise comes, I will take you for a tour of this one."

Mr. Piberius curled up into a circle, his stomach facing the ground. By trial and error he had found the best posture for sleeping in these kinds of places, and Nick, after trying several other positions to no avail, found himself copying this stranger.

"And what's in this one?"

"Remember those stories about knights and castles?"

"Like Robin Hood?"

"Funny you should mention him. I know that guy, and if we're lucky, you'll get to meet him tomorrow! Now hush, comrade."

And with that, Mr. Piberius was silent as could be, and Little Nick noticed for the first time the sounds of the crickets. Although he feared the contents of his dreams, the chirping of the crickets invited him into the depths of slumber, and he found himself unable to resist.

That night, he dreamed of his nightmare field again. But it was different this time: The burning wheat had been replaced with ashes, and in the now cloudy daylight that filled the place, the monster was less intimidating than he had once been. But he was still there, the creature with a black hole for a mouth, so Nick hid _behind_ the oven he had been so cruelly melted in last night. He heard footsteps as the creature began to limp around the place.

 _That's odd_ , he thought. _The monster is_ **_limping_**? _He seemed stronger before._

Nick peeked around the corner, and there it was, limping along, looking for its meal.

"Come out come out wherever you are! I _know_ you're around here somewhere!"

Despite the attempt to be threatening, Nick found it anticlimactic. The monster was almost always everywhere at once: always on Nick's tail, ready to pounce. It's demonic thousand-teethed mouth never more than a foot away from Nick, yet here the little fox was, somehow _evading_ this once omnipotent figure. It was staring _right at_ him, yet it couldn't see Nick!

 _Perhaps Mr. Piberius was right. Maybe I **have** escaped!_

For one of the first times in his life, Nick's developing frontal lobe kicked in, its voice cold and unfamiliar, yet its conclusions solid, its rhetoric inviting. It told him to step out. To get closer. Despite being less than 30 feet in front of the monster, with nothing to obscure himself, the monster somehow could not see him! Perhaps this blindness could be exploited...

"This is no longer funny. Come out now or when I find you, I _will_ throw you back in the oven!"

Even before he had finished talking, Nick's frontal lobe was in overdrive, drafting rebuttals. It was now his turn to speak:

"Oh come on. This really is a disappointment. You were always the one in control, you always knew where I was, you were always the one giving chase. You could literally set this whole field aflame, and now you are resorting to this? You are bluffing. You cannot see me *when I am right in front of you*, and I doubt that you could even light the oven, assuming you could confine me to it, and by the way, I'm pretty sure that you can't do that either. If you really are the big scary monster, then why don't you come and get me?"

It was now thoroughly enraged.

"You need to watch that tongue, _boy!_ You think you can run, but you cannot escape your _fate_ , your _purpose_."

"Your threats don't scare me. Not anymore. I'd like to see you try. Go on, I dare you: just _try_ to even get close to me _in the real world_ , and get out of my head."

The monster burst into flames. It screamed, it howled, it writhed and it sputtered. Then it was gone.

 _Good riddance!_

* * *

"I cant believe-"

" _Shut up!_ "

Raymond got in close, almost too close, and began to whisper. 20 years later, Nicholas Raymond Wilde was stuck in the backseat of a ZPD van, once again miserable. For nearly 2 decades, he had been free, and now, he was trapped. Again.

And like last time, he was planning his next escape.

"They can hear us."

"I can't believe she ditched us like that! Shapeshifting bastard!" Nicky had also been arrested. Georgina, playing the role of the beaver hostage to a T, had been let off scott free. The cops hadn't even checked to see if it was _her_ car, they just assumed so, after her bullshit sob story about being held at gunpoint by 'uncollared savages'.

"No, Mr. Edmus, she didn't ditch us. She's keeping her advantage."

"What the hell are you on about? She told them we were _holding her at gunpoint!_ And to think we were almost-"

"Because she knew that was how she could get away, dipshit! We were ambushed, surrounded! Sure, Georgina has done some really impressive things, be she's not a miracle worker! I mean, what did you _want_ her to do: take on the fuzz and get us all killed? No. We both new immediately that you and I would be captured, but as long as she is free, we still have an ace up our sleeve."

"OK, so assuming she hasn't really ditched us, what the hell do we do?"

"We could always wait. Georgina knows what she's doing, and at most, we'd probably be in jail for no more than a week."

"So, we're going to do nothing? Just bide our time?"

"Do you have a better plan? Remember, as long as she's still out there, we've still got plan B. She's still connected to my pocketwatch, so she knows where I am, and it wouldn't be all that impossible for her to compromise the security systems of whatever penetentiary they might throw us in. We could always try to escape, but that would only _increase_ our chances of dying at the hands of a trigger-happy policeman with a vendetta to fan."

 ** _I_** _ **HAVE YOU NOW, YOU LITTLE SHIT!**_

Raymond knew that voice.

 _No! That's impossible!_

It belonged to a little man in his head.

 ** _I TOLD YOU BEFORE, YOU CANNOT ESCAPE YOUR DESTINY!_**

Well, more of a monster. A big, scary, mammal-eating monster, who had been silenced for decades. As he recalled his nightmares from one flashback to another, it all began to make sense. He'd studied them at the academy. He'd know people who were sent in to kill them. He'd poured over every case file, fascinated by them, and yet he never made the connection until now.

His imaginary friend, the ghost from ZERO, it wasn't a ghost at all. It was an omnipredator, very real, and very, very dangerous.

"Change of plans...We have to leave. We have to leave now!"

"Hold on, didn't you _j_ _ust_ say we should stay put."

"Well, something's changed...We're being chased by something far worse than a policeman."

"What?"

"We're being _hunted_ by an omnipred."

"And what the hell is that supposed to mean?" Nicky was starting to think Raymond was crazy. Not for the first time either.

"You know all that bullshit they spout, about how predators like us used to eat the prey? This thing, it actually does it, only he doesn't confine himself to rabbits. He is a predator of predators, a child of the forgotten genus, and 20 years ago, I was his next meal, that is, until I escaped."

"And how the fuck do I know any of these 'omnipreds' even exist?"

Raymond's face grew more morbid by the second.

"Myself, and many others, have seen the damage firsthand. For the most part, they've been extinct for millenia, but once in a blue moon, a straggler comes out of the woodwork, and then, agents like me, but with much bigger guns, are sent in to kill it. I know a Jackrabbit who was in a cleanup operation, and he told me that even _without_ the telepathy, he'd wager that a single omnipred is far more dangerous than an entire Zystopian ZPD precinct. It's a nearly unstoppable beast that can read your thoughts and mind-control and entire city, and he'll _devour_ anyone who gets in his way, or anyone he fancies will make for a tasty meal."

"And why the hell didn't you do anything about it earlier?"

Raymond was _really_ starting to panic.

"Because, until now, I thought this specific omnipred was dead."

"You know this guy?" Nicky was sarcastic, if only to mask his own growing dread.

"He used to fuck with me in my dreams, when I was a child; slowly driving me insane, so that, when the time to feast drew near, I would be unable to fight back. Only I escaped that world, and they sent a small army to hunt it down and kill it. Somehow, it not only survived, but it gained the ability to travel from that world to this one...and now it wants to find the relay...and it knows that's where I want to...so it...oh shit!"

The monster read Raymond's mind. It knew where the relay was, and what it did. For nearly a thousand years, it had been stuck between these two worlds, and it saw its chance to escape. And to conquer.

Raymond's right hand, which had been surgically augmented to dislocate _every_ joint on command, was emitting some rather nasty sounding clicking. It squirmed its way out of the cuffs, and dangled from Raymond's wrist like a corpse from a noose. With many more disgruntling clicks, and quite a few grimaces from Raymond, the hand regained its normal shape, and reached into his trenchcoat.

Once again, Raymond spoke into his pocketwatch.

"Georgina?"

"Raymond, what's wrong now?" Even the android could sense the worry in his voice.

"Forget about plan B. We have far greater worries now. My counterpart and I are being... _hunted_...by a T5-omnipred."

"Raymond, are you-"

"We've tried to kill this one before, it's file #672 in the omnipred database. Officially listed as _escaped._ "

"I see."

"Georgina, forget about the mission, and forget about us. Protect the relay at all costs! If we're lucky, we'll meet you there, and if not..."

"Raymond, you are in police custody, how are you planning on escaping?"

"I may be forced to take some drastic measures...I may not be able to contact you again. just get to the relay, and whatever you do, _don't let any of them in._ "

"Understood."

"Goodbye, Georgina."

They sat in the van, Raymond contemplating what would surely be his most desperate move yet.

Nicky broke the silence. "So what do we do?"

"Well, it knows we're here, it remembers _me_ , and one way or the other, I don't think we'll be alive long enough for plan B to come into effect."

"How so, we'll just be dragged off to jail? Nothing safer than several feet of concrete and steel bars, right?" Nicky underestimated the beast's power, political and otherwise.

"Oh no, that's the other thing: The few omnipreds that have survived this long are clever, cunning, powerful and extremely manipulative. It's almost certainly in the government, probably at the top of the chain, calling all the shots. Pretty soon, this van is going to turn around, and we're gonna go straight to him. No prison, no trial, just death."

"What do you mean?"

"Isn't it obvious? Zystopias do not exist by themselves: they are unstable, self-destructing, and require a truly enormous evil in their cores to survive. Usually, it's some sociopathic politician with an insatiable appetite for power, or a centuries old conspiracy concerned only with the maintenance of the status quo, usually lead by the monster itself, revealing its existence only to a chosen few. It's how they've survived for this long, this one has probably been doing it for at least 100 years. Maybe 2."

Raymond was wrong by orders of magnitude. The beast had been trapped here for a _very_ long time, and was as desperate to escape as they were.

"So how do we get out of here?"

"We can't just pick the lock and run for it."

"Why not?" OK, Nicky should have known the answer to this one. Maybe he was also starting to panic. Raymond couldn't blame him.

"Judy Hopps, _fastest runner on the force_ , is driving this thing. Remember? She'd know the door was open before we even got out, we wouldn't stand a chance!"

"When you were talking to _her_ , you said something about desperate measures. What did you mean?"

"Remember the teleporter I used to get us out of that jail?"

"You said we have no power for that."

"I do...but it might not work, if it did, it would only work once and it would compromise the pocketwatch. If the other relays weren't hogged, I would've just mashed the panic button the moment we found a decent place in the city to hide for a few minutes, but they seem to be clogged for the foreseeable future. These things ran off of batteries, you know, but more recently, they figured out how to beam power through a pocket-wormhole. I could hack into the mainframe, instruct it to send over a few billion gigawatts, and use the power to drive the teleporter gun. In doing so, however, the wormhole would snap shut, and the pocketwatch would be rendered useless, which would mean the relay, which the omnipred is desperately trying to find, our _only_ means of escaping this world. Either we're screwed now, or we screw ourselves over later."

For once, Nicky was the voice of reason. "Do we have a choice?"

"Nope."

* * *

They were planning something. Chompers who talked on the way to the slammer always did.

However, Judy couldn't quite make out what they were saying, perhaps because they were whispering. Nevertheless, they were planning something, and she made a mental note to have her gun drawn and ready when her partner opened the door.

Up until the homicide, Nicholas E. Wilde had been little more than a dime-a-dozen small time petty criminal. Certainly one of the smallest fish in the sea.

The same could not be said of his companion. Already, she knew he'd be a handful.

Her first guess was that he was Nicholas' brother, given the uncanny resemblance they shared, aside from the white mohawk the strange Fox wore. There was only one problem: _Nicholas was an only child_. And the more she thought of it, the deeper the impossibilities went.

He had somehow clipped Nicholas' collar. One might assume this detail was trivial, until they considered the fact that in order to install such a (very illegal) device, one had to have a means of _getting the collar off_ , and to do that, one needed a key.

Having this key made Nicholas' unnamed companion a _very_ dangerous man, right up there with mass murderers, serial prison escapees, Mafia godfathers, and terrorists.

That was the other thing about him that made no sense to Judy: Such a big fish compared to Nicholas, yet he had somehow evaded and eluded the ZPD entirely. No files, no incident, no mugshots, _nothing_. Judging by the fully grown fur below his dummy collar (this last detail only made Judy that much more afraid of him, as there was nothing to stop him from going savage at any moment), he had been out of it for _months_ , doing god-knows what underneath the ZPD's radar. Judy began to speculate over how long this guy had been slinking through the underground, and shuddered at the thought.

 _Not that we'd really need an investigation. Simply being in possession of a collar key is enough to put that guy behind bars for life._

Of course, he didn't even _try_ to resist. The same man who had broken someone else out of a high security prison and hijacked cars frequently enough to actually do a half decent job of keeping the hostage quiet, the rogue chomper who rarely wore even a dummy collar, perhaps having never been tamed at all, somehow just nonchalantly climbed into the police van. Another sign that he was planning something.

"Hey Buckey, 'ya think that rogue we got is gonna' to try to escape?"

"I'm surprised he hasn't already, the way they're hamming it up back there."

Their drive back the slammer was rudely interrupted by a railroad crossing, lights flashing, signalling the approach of one of the many trains that went into the city.

The horn alerted Raymond, who had just finished tightening the last screw...

Judy opened the small window that allowed her to monitor her begrudging passengers.

"Will you two shut-"

Then she saw the thing Raymond had been working on:

Bits of wire and solder were strewn about the floor. Both pairs of handcuffs laid in the corner, copiously wrapped in noise absorbing tape. _Clever_. The gun itself had the tarnished pocketwatch strapped to it like a Siamese twin, the black box that supplied it with power now hissing angrily as it began the anti-mass transfer.

As the oncoming freight train blared its horn, the device's coolant line ruptured, flooding the chamber in fog that might have been toxic.

"Well, I'm afraid that's our cue. We've a train to catch."

There was a loud pop, a flash of light, and a very harsh ~60hz buzzing that permeated the entire vehicle.

And then it was over. The two foxes were gone! _On her watch!_

* * *

Well, that's a wrap!

Don't you just _love_ a good cliffhanger?


	11. Raymond The Runaway Rides The Rails!

****Warning: This chapter, once again, earns the M rating. Be prepared for some high quality nightmare-fuel, substantial gore, AUTOMATON SPEAKING IN ALL-CAPS, and _Bellwether_.****

Hello dear reader!

Sorry for the hiatus...vacation stuff happened, and will continue to happen, so the next chapter will probably arrive in early August. Be assured, however, that I do intend on finishing this fanfic, and I've got quite a few ideas floating around for others...At any rate, this chapter is another long one, so here we go!

In our last chapter, Raymond and Nicky were arrested, by _Judy_ of all people! Can they escape?

Let's find out!

* * *

As the oncoming freight train blared its horn, the device's coolant line ruptured, flooding the chamber in fog that might have been toxic.

"Well, I'm afraid that's our cue. We've a train to catch."

Raymond pulled the trigger, grimacing as his Pocketwatch, his one lifeline to the outside worlds, fried itself delivering the juice. But it did not die in vain, for the gamble had paid off! The portal was open, the other side gazing upon a segment of track the train hadn't reached.

Yet.

Raymond grabbed Nicky, and the two ran through the portal. Strangely enough, Nicky himself was no longer flabbergastedly beside himself as a result of this latest stunt, and, to his surprise, was getting used to the idea of portals, counterparts, relays, and whatever other parlor tricks Raymond had waiting up his trenchcoat sleeves. On the way to the slammer after his fateful encounter with Officer Hopps, Nicky _had_ dreamt of Raymond, and he had once seriously considered the possibility that he was either dead, or that he had been dreaming this whole time, and would wake up at any moment back in his jail cell.

Except there were two problems with that hypothesis: It was ~8:30, Nicky had been awake for two hours, and he was getting hungry. Dead people didn't eat, and dreams never lasted this long.

And even in his dreams, Nicky never actually managed to even get his collar off, let alone escape the cops, _twice!_

The vague sense that what he was seeing and doing was really was... _real_...began to dawn on him, and he was now rather excited, much like Raymond himself had been when he awoke to find himself in the very barn he had fallen asleep in the night before, as opposed to his cell back in the city.

As he ran through the flickering spacetime orifice, Nicky had just enough time to look back to the other side and give Judy the finger before it snapped shut. In the distance, he saw the train, rapidly approaching the two Foxes.

"Quick, behind the trees!"

Raymond abruptly dove for the cover of the forest that bordered the tracks, and Nicky soon found himself joining his strange companion.

"There's almost no time to explain, so listen! We can't let the conductor see us, or he'll stop the train! We're looking for a flatcar, that is, the long flat part of the-AH! There it is! Now as it passes, you're going to jump onto it. Any questions?"

"What about you?"

"You run on ahead. I've done this before, but you may need some help. Be sure you're running as fast as you can when you jump, and try to time it so you stay away from the wheels."

"What?"

"There's no time! _¡Vamanos!_ "

The locomotive roared past them, Nicky burst out after it. Raymond jogged aside the train, keeping an eye out for the flatcar he had spotted. Soon enough, it too came thundering down the track, and he ran for it like his life depended on it.

In a way, it did. There were Razorbacks everywhere, and if they missed this one, they'd get caught long before the next train came. And if they somehow escaped the Razorbacks, they would still have hundreds of miles of hitchiking and car stealing to do. Hitchhiking was much too slow, and stealing cars attracted a lot of attention from the cops, who were already frantically searching for the two foxes.

As the rail cars thundered past him, Raymond grimly considered the consequences of failure: If he was lucky, he'd get pulled under the wheels and crushed in an instant. The wheels were by no means sharp, but they each had multiple tons atop them, and with that kind of force behind them, they'd cleave Rayond in two, not at all unlike the GOMCO clamps the blue monsters had used to declaw Raymond all those years ago. And if he was unlucky, the Razorbacks would take him straight to the beast.

Raymond didn't want to think about any of that. Declawing flashbacks and nightmares of _the beast_ were relics of his old life, before the Consortium. And if he succeeded, they'd _stay_ in the past, and he'd go back to his future in the Consortium. All he had to do was get on this train, and he'd be foisted away at or above highway speeds, once the train got the to plains. Not quite so fast as a monorail that did 186 MPH, but damn faster than any car in the parking lot that was Zystopian Route 66. He saw the flatcar approaching, thanked his lucky stars that the train was going around a curve in a hillier region (and was therefore going slow enough for him to actually make the jump), and leapt for it.

As a teenager, Raymond had played some ridiculous games. Games where he had to leap for a ball, often in an exosuit. Games in which he had leapt dozens of feet into the air, and run at speeds on par with those of this train. He'd made hundreds of such jumps before, his team's victory often hinging on whether or not he made the jump. But this was more than a game. Now, it was life or something far worse than death, for him and for his runaway partner.

Knowing more lives than his own rested in his next step, he leapt for the simultanious safety and danger of the flatcar, his hands already yearning for something to prop himself up on. But it was not enough, and he was beginning to slip.

Back to the ground.

Back to the great steel wheels that would certainly crush him into tiny bits, and the monster that would eat them all up in an instant.

In a final effort to avoid certain death, his right hand shot down, his claws boring their way into the wooden deck of the flatcar, desperately digging for a grip on the otherwise slick surface. They found purchase, and with a great heave of his shoulder, and an equally great ache from his fingertips, he pulled himself onto the car.

But he was not done yet. Nicky, who was not nearly as athletically gifted as he (perhaps from malnutrition, or maybe from rotting in jail, gleefully anticipating your own death), was rapidly running out of time.

"JUMP FOR IT, NICKY!"

As Raymond sunk the claws of his left hand into the floor boards, his right hand reached for Nicky, who was ironically clawing at the moving floor of the flatcar with his stubby, mutilated hands. With one last great heave, both Foxes were now safely aboard the train. A minute ago, they'd been in the back of the ZPD van, being carried toward their demise. Now they were once again carried, this time on a train that was cruising away from the city, each second elapsed being one second closer to the relay, and therefore closer to anywhere else in the multiverse.

Raymond reached into his tenchcoat and removed the fading business card from one of the many inside pockets. Glancing from his recently polished claws to the "mad scientist" armadillo on the card, he sent a prayer of thanks to the doctor who had fixed his hands. He also set a reminder to take Nicky in to see the doctor, as soon as they got out of this mess. Raymond figured the claws weren't the _only_ part of Nicky this world had managed to fuck up, and he didn't want this guy to die from _liver damage_ or something like that after surviving all of this nonsense.

"Well, my angsty friend, we've made it! Now, we just kick back, watch the world go by, and get off at Bunnyburrow."

"Dude!" Nicky paused to catch his breath "That was crazy! I thought I was going to _die!_ "

" _Haven't we all?_ It was one hell of a gamble, but we've done it! We're on the train, and with any luck, it'll hit 80 when we reach the plains." Raymond was ecstatic. They were really getting _out of here_ now. Already, the train was beginning to accelerate, the distant whine of the locomotive turbos music to his ears.

"Hold up, how do you know where this thing's going!"

"Nicky, have you ever read of Sherlock Holmes? It's all in the deductions! Of course, I may not be as clever as he, but I _do_ know where this train is going, and I can tell you why."

"Did you just call me 'Nicky'?"

"Yes, I am a Nick, and you are a Nick. So I am called Raymond, and you are called Nicky. Otherwise, it would be much too confusing!"

"So how exactly _does_ that counterpart stuff work, like, do we just have the same name, or are we like actually the same per-"

And then Raymond saw that they had not escaped just yet, and that they were still very much in danger of being captured, again.

" _ **GET DOWN!**_ Razorbacks!"

And there they were, looking more like aliens from a 1950's B movie than officers of any sort of law. There seemed to be a small army of them in the trees, each clad in puke yellow hazmat gear, slowly advancing in the direction of Officer Hopps' van. In a way, they were the Zystopian equivalent of animal control, summoned whenever a "rabid" predator was caught without a collar, and they took no chances: Mini-guns, flamethrowers, cattle prods, and even the good old wire-noose-on-a-pole! The razorbacks had every sort of horrid weapon one could imagine, and when they weren't hunting down uncollared preds, they were the omnipred's hit men, bringing the next pour soul straight to his oven.

"Wait, are those _bullet guns?_ "

"Yes, Nicky."

"I thought they banned those!"

"Well that's how much trouble we're in. At the core of each Zystopia is a great evil, and _this_ is what happens when you anger _the_ _big bad_."

At that moment, two razorbacks were walking aside the tracks with their helmets off, probably making small talk. It was a rare glimpse of the men behind the blood-red face-masks, and they were no less terrifying now. At least, when they were the faceless servants of the beast, you couldn't see the sociopathic grins on their faces as they sent you to your doom.

As the train passed, Raymond and Nicky somehow found themselves less than 10 feet away from them. For a split second, Raymond made eye contact with both of the razorbacks.

" _Holy shit! They're on the train!_ "

"Fuck! We've been spotted. Quick, we gotta' hide!" At this point, Raymond's facade had melted away. It was rather obvious to anyone that he was scared. After all, these weren't the cops, who could be out-foxed and out-witted. These were razorbacks, who'd pump them both full of lead if they did so much as breathe wrong.

"Hey Raymond, I have an idea. Do ya' see that hopper car behind you?"

Train activated its emergency brakes, Raymond strode to the hopper car, scurried up the ladder, threw the hatch open, and disappeared within the cavernous metal funnel in the blink of an eye. As Nicky made his way to the ladder, he heard some muffled cursing from Raymond, who hadn't realized how slippery the hopper could be, or how far the drop was. For a moment, Nicky worried about how they'd get out, assuming their plan even worked, but he figured they'd devise some crazy scheme to escape.

It was the kind of thing Raymond had always done, and they'd been-

Well, actually, they _weren't_ fine. Not even close.

But at least they hadn't been captured yet. That's got to count for _something_ , right?

"Hey Nicky, close that hatch behind you!"

Raymond activated his flashlight, shining a single glimmer of hope in the cavernous dark.

As Nicky slid into the empty hopper, he stared in awe at his own cleverness: It was an almost perfect hiding place. In the event that one of them actually opened the hatch and peeked inside, the two foxes were well hidden in the shadows, contrasted by the bright sunshine outside, and camouflaged by the brown paint that covered every square inch of visible metal. The car itself was as tall as a normal boxcar, deterring all but the nosiest of Razorbacks, and at the very bottom of the car, which was as low as the wheels themselves, were several trapdoors, through which whatever this car carried (probably corn, considering the lightly colored dust that was getting into Raymond's pelt) could be dumped. These trapdoor chutelets were the best places to hide, as they would render both foxes out of sight from most angles. Indeed, the razorbacks would actually have to crawl around inside the thing to find them! And if they were being _that_ thorough, then _nowhere_ was safe.

So they cowered in the corn dust, having settled themselves in right as the train came to a halt.

"Psst! Nicky! Don't make a sound till I say the coast is clear! They can't see us, but they may hear us!"

"Got it."

God knows how long they sat there in the stifling darkness, the air slowly growing staler, and hotter. At times, the frantic footsteps and vocalizations of the Razorbacks served as a metronome, anchoring the otherwise postmodern flow of the perception of time. Other times, the Razorbacks searched other parts of the train, plunging both into silence that itself was louder than the horridly squeaky breaks.

Raymond sat there, hiding in the shade, contemplating (or rather, being forced to contemplate) the many nightmarish ways they could kill him:

"Times up, chomper!" The 12 gauge lead slug tore through his skin like paper, crushing his skull, and macerating his brain to a pulp. It left behind a gruesome blood-rose of fur and innards as it exited his forehead. Raymond was dead before he heard the shot.

 _You **can't** escape, Nicholas!_

The twin darts from the taser embedded themselves in his flesh, sending their twisted arcs of white-hot pain through Raymond's body as he collapsed to the ground. The omnipred was on him in an instant, ripping his spine out with one fell swoop. His fist came down on Raymond's head, turning his lights off forever.

 _You can run, but you cannot **hide**!_

A phalanx of wire nooses on poles lunged for his neck, and try as he might, one found purchase, ratcheting down on his windpipe. Raymond remained conscious just long enough to glimpse the flames that would consume his body, post mortem.

 _I know you're around here **somewhere**!_

The bear trap snapped shut on his ankle, staining the air with the stench of blood. Raymond tumbled to the ground, looking up as he was surrounded by the Razorbacks. A poisoned dart struck him in the head, sending him to the black void of the hereafter. _Oh Nicholas, it's **suppertime**!_

They dragged him out of the hopper car by the neck, and threw him to the ground. The Razorbacks formed a ring around him, and on the opposite end of this _de facto_ arena, sat the crate. It oscillated wildly, uttering thuds as whatever monster it contained tried to escape. One of the faceless razorbacks, hiding behind a riot shield and a hellish gasmask, released the nails with his crowbar, one by one. The lid flew off, and the black demon dashed for its next meal. In an instant, the thing was on him, biting, prodding, tearing, its omnimalevolent green eye filling Raymond's entire visual field. One of the razorbacks activated a remote, and the leather scorpion stung him with the glass syringe, its eye now as orange as Raymond's rapidly building rage. In his nighthowler-induced insanity, he bit at the black demon, his mouth tasting of formaldehyde and ozone. Yet the demon appeared to be... _enjoying_...his efforts to kill it, jolting the now savage (and borderline non-sentient) Raymond with each bite. It stung him again, injecting him into a nearly monochromatic world of red collars and crimson blood.

The black demon lunged for his neck, pinning him to the cold steel earth, harshly lit by the surgical lights. Another demonic Razorback (itself a grinning hellhound in the most repugnant acid-yellow suit), released a pair of silver demons, hook shaped, with a hole to restrain and a scalpel to sting. Out of the growing pool of Raymond's blood, emerged two undead nurses, their eyes gouged out and sewn shut. They took the silver demons, and motioned for Raymond's fingers. The Black demon laughed, the nurses laughed, the Razorbacks laughed, and Raymond screamed, as the silver demons sliced away at his hands, which were now engulfed in a sea of agony. At long last, after what seemed like an eternity of soul crushing torment, their mutilation ritual was over, and the 5 demons, still laughing at Raymond, ripped out his jugulars, and greedily devoured his entire world as he finally drowned in his own blood, awash in the relatively sweet release of death itself, and the overwhelming reek of iron.

 _Come out now, and we'll make it quick!_

It was all a delusion. A daydream, an overactive imagination, or perhaps it was the beast, worming his way into the mind of Nicholas Raymond Wilde, hoping to drive him insane. He'd tried this tactic before, and the omnipred had nearly succeeded last time.

Raymond opened his eyes, and stared into the real world of the sealed (and now rather hot) hopper, every bit as black as his dreams. He checked his watch.

It was almost 9:00 AM. He'd been dreaming in a state of near insanity for not quite half an hour, and the train _still_ wasn't moving. Raymond had seen the shrinks before, and he swore to see them again, assuming he escaped. Judging by the fact that Nicky was crying in the fetal position, he too was probably under the beast's spell. Once upon a time, a "pacemaker" of sorts had been installed in Raymond's brain, artificially regulating the neurotransmitter balances in his limbic system to keep his otherwise crippling and traumatic flashbacks and mood swings in check. Having access to such an "override" command had proven useful in managing PTSD.

And like all crutches, be it having to sleep with a charging plug in his head, or having to opt for a pat-down at airports because he couldn't clear a metal detector, Raymond had hated it. But most of all, he hated what it signified: That he was a basket case, a trainwreck just _waiting_ to happen, that he was still so utterly chained to the horrors of his past that he quite literally needed an electronic voice in his head, a manually operated TAME collar in his brain, to live a normal life. And like all crutches, Raymond had been so very, very proud when the doctors finally said the cognitive training wheels could come off. Now, however, he was kicking himself for it. A single "HALT!" command could've put a definitive stop to the omnipred's psychic harassment, but now, all he had was the naptime gas.

Speaking of which, Raymond decided to do something drastic...he once again activated his light, and after assuring himself that there weren't any monsters in the night, he reached into his trenchcoat and removed an aerosol can with a breathing mask over it. Inhaling the gases in high doses was a fairly painless way to commit suicide, and in smaller doses, would knock the victim out, and temporarily disable long term memory formation. It was often used by agents to perform memory wipes and cover their tracks...

Considering the nightmares, Raymond figured Nicky would appreciate a dreamless sleep with a memory wipe.

Raymond held the mask over Nicky's snout, and held the button for two seconds. The usual dosage was 4.

Nicky stopped crying. Then he stopped twitching. His heartbeat slowed, and he fell into a very deep sleep. He'd be out for quite a while. _Good_.

Raymond retrieved his notebook, wrote "Chased by omnipred, KO'd myself and Nicky on train to BunnyBurrow to preserve sanity, and protect mental secrets. Both sustained heavy psychological assault, recommend psychiatric _help_ ASAP."

Raymond held the mask to his own face, already smelling the traces that had adhered to the plastic. He held the button for one second, took a deep breath, put the can back in one of his many pockets, and passed out.

Raymond awoke with a start. He was in almost complete darkness, and had the vague sensation of moving, somewhere. _Did they find us?_

Then he remembered his flashlight, and as he stared at the brown metal walls, claustrophobic and yet reassuring, Raymond found himself able to recall, with some detail, most of the events leading up to his self-administered naptime, although whether or not this was good or bad he could not decide. Sure, he was still familiar enough with what had happened that he wouldn't just walk right into the clutches of the omnipred...but he could still remember the nightmares it had caused. He figured the shrinks would have to get _those_ out. Again.

 _Well, fuck. Time to find a way out of this hopper..._

* * *

Raymond checked his watch. It was now 11:00 AM, and Nicky had yet to awaken from his nap, although judging by the way he twitched and squirmed, he'd be up soon. Although he hadn't dosed himself quite enough to erase all recollection of the beast's nightmares, he at least had a stunning view of the plains to bleach them from his eyes, and the exhaustion from escaping the hopper to keep those thoughts at bay, for now. Raymond, now totally in the moment, thought it amazing that such a wonderful landscape could exist in such a hellish world.

"Hey, where the hell are we?"

"Oh, hello Nicky! I see you've finally awoken. Here's what you might have missed. Today was the day you were supposed to be-"

"Killed? I know that part."

"I broke you out."

"Uh huh."

"We drove out of the city with a friend of mine...and then we got arrested."

"And how did we escape? Weren't we being chased by a _human?_ "

"No Nicky, humans are a _myth_. We're being chased by an _omnipred_ , and I did a crazy dohicky with the watchumacallit and the thingakhadjigger..." Raymond gestured to his pocketwatch-portal-device-amalgamation-atrocity-o-matic, which was now utterly inoperable.

"...And then we got ourselves aboard this train, and shortly thereafter, the train was surrounded and searched by a squad of Razorbacks!"

" _Oh shit! There were **Razorbacks**?_ "

"You don't remember?"

"Come to think of it, everything after the part where I fell into that hopper car is a foggy haze..."

"Good, at least _one_ of us won't have to deal with those nightmares. The beast we're being chased by is an extraordinarily gifted telepath. It can read minds and telecast nightmares to or from anybody, and it nearly drove both of us insane...so I did the only sensible thing there was to do: I knocked us both out with some of this naptime gas. It puts you to sleep, and temporarily disables memory formation...in other words, _it_ can't read the non-functioning mind, and the gas also erased some of the nightmare reels it was stuffing into your head. Really nasty stuff, declawings and deaths and laughter and blood and so forth."

"So, where are we now?" Nicky, ever the no-nonsense type, got to the point.

"We're on a train to BunnyBurrow, of course. So we can get to the relay, and get out of here!"

"Hold up, how do you know where this thing's going!"

"Well Nicky, it's a simple-"

"Did you just call me 'Nicky'?"

"We already had this conversation, but then again, you probably don't remember much of it. Yes, I am Nick from one universe, and you are Nick from another. So I am called Raymond, and you are called Nicky. Otherwise, it would be much too confusing for us both, and for everyone else!"

"So how exactly does that work, do we just have the same name or are we like actually the same person?"

Raymond took a deep breath. "To make a long story short, _kinda_. Any rate, I can tell that story later, as we certainly have a long ride ahead of us. For now, however, I'll explain how I know where we are going: First, note the length of this train. Pretty long, right?"

"No shit."

"OK, now humor me this: How many locomotives are pulling this train? One. All of those boxcars you see must therefore be empty, and of course, the flatcars like this one have almost nothing on them."

Nicky was now slightly confused. "I thought those were intermodals?"

" _That's not the point, Nicky!_ "

"Well intermodals or not, they don't make sense. Why would they send an _empty_ train?"

"Well, no. The train isn't _quite_ empty, I mean, there's _us,_ and whoever the hell is driving this thing, but the main cargo here is the rolling stock itself. See, when the delivery truck unloads its stuff, what do you think it does? It drives back to the warehouse to pick up more. Similarly, this train, which is on the line that connects Zootopia, and a few other cities, to BunnyBurrow, is empty. Now tell me, my friend, what would they ship from BunnyBurrow to Zootopia?"

"Carrots?" Nicky, despite his relative familiarity with the thickness of the eggshells surrounding Raymond's tolerance for pro-stereotype rhetoric, _cracked_ the joke anyway.

"Heh. No, not just carrots, but you are generally correct." Raymond played along with the joke. "BunnyBurrow sends produce and some lumber to the cities, which is what these flatcars would be carrying if the train were going in the other direction. You know all those foxes and bears living there? They're all lumberjacks."

"So wait..." Nicky suddenly got it. "...this train is on the line that connects Zootopia to BunnyBurrow."

"Yes." Raymond was hoping he'd get it.

"And if it were going from BunnyBurrow to Zootopia, it would be pulled by many locomotives, and crammed full of foodstuffs and tree trunks."

"Correct." _So close!_

"And because it isn't..."

"Well that part _is_ obvious, but do continue."

"...it must therefore be returning to BunnyBurrow!"

"Now you've got it! This train is almost certainly going to BunnyBurrow, or somewhere near it!"

The train came onto a bridge, crossing some brackish, muddied river that ran through the dystopian prarie. To their left, they could see the mountains the train had just tunneled through, and to their right, seemingly endless miles of wide open plains. Considering the unspeakable evils in the city, the vista before them was actually quite beautiful, and both foxes paused their conversation to enjoy the sight. Nicky's collar emitted an audible beeping as it went from green to yellow, Nicky himself was in awe of the landscape, so much so that his collar was detecting it, and saw fit to punish it, like they did all other feelings. It had even tried to administer a shock during the frantic train chase, and during the many subsequent nightmares, but due to Raymond's clip (the one he installed in chapter 7), Nicky hadn't noticed it until now, when it disturbed the relative tranquility between the two.

"Oh, _damn_ that pesky thing. Here, we can take ours off for at least the next few hours, assuming this train is making another unforeseen detour, or unless Officer Hopps somehow followed us onto the train."

"Did she?"

"Well, we got on the train somewhen around 8:30, and-"

"Did you just say _somewhen?_ "

"Yes, a slang-term I picked up from a group of time-travelers I partied with one night at the academy. _A Very strange bunch,_ they are."

Nicky was speechless.

" _Anyway_ , we got on this train some _time_ around 8:30, and it's 11 or so now, so I dare say she would've found us by now."

Raymond eyed the black demon with disgust. Only this was the real world, where they had a keyhole that could cripple it, and where a small metal clip could render it somewhat harmless, not at all unlike a muzzle on a savage animal. Raymond took his collar key and playfully jabbed it into the hole on the device, releasing its chokehold on Nicky Edmus. The lifesaving metal clip, which was now noticeably scorched by electric arcs, remained attached to the device. Like most Zystopian preds, Nicky immediately began massaging his somewhat bare neck, the collar's absence far more noteworthy than its familiar agony. Raymond, the lucky devil, still had his fur coat fully developed beneath it, and was perfectly comfortable without a collar on (although this fur _did_ make it considerably more itchy to wear the dummy). Noting Nicky's discomfort, Raymond handed him a scarf. _"For recovering Zystopians"_ it jokingly advertised on the inside fabric.

Nicky swaddled his own neck with it, and turned away from Raymond to face the 90 MPH vista that was visible to him from the train. Due to the unexpected stop from the Razorbacks, the train was running late, and the engineer was trying to make up for the lost time.

"Raymond, how did you get that key?"

Raymond began his explanation. "Would you be surprised if I told you that this world is worse than most of the others? In the Consortium, we call worlds that still have shock collars 'Zystopias,' because they're dystopian Zootopias. As for the other, more civilized worlds, where they don't allow such barbarisms as the so-called tame collar, we call them "Zootopias." Although someone who has spent their entire life here might assume that the dystopian way is the _only_ way, I assure you, there _are_ better ways to run a society, and hellholes like these are actually, and by a wide margin, in the minority. Less than one third of worlds in the charted multiverse are meet the criteria for Zystopia, and of those worlds, less than half of them get even close to being this awful. In most places, the collar keys are innocuous, if somewhat curious objects, and every Consortium agent is given a standard issue set of them for scenarios like ours."

"What's the Consortium?"

Raymond sighed, and sat down to marvel at the landscape.

"That's a long story. It's a weird mix of government and a mafia. You pay your dues, they leave you alone. You do business with them and follow the rules, and they let you into the metaphorical house. And usually, if someone from some ass-backward place like this tries to fuck with a paying customer, people like me show up and make them disappear. Delinquents, delegates, detectives, dictators, or demagogues: You name it, we've offed 'em."

"Any chance you could bribe a few people to get rid of mayor Bellwether?"

"And what good would that do? Remember, she's not the kingpin here. She's taking orders from something far worse, and it's that something you and I are running from. Call me crazy, but it really _is_ a conspiracy, and if we kill her, they'll just find someone else to replace her, like they always do when one of their own dies."

"So, if I wanted to stay in this...Consortium...what would I have to do?" Nicky, ever the opportunist, had beaten Raymond to his sales pitch.

"Well, it was, and still is, a highly experimental mode of society based on a hardcore consequentialist ethical paradigm...so I guess all you'd have to do is play by a very limited set of rules and stick with me."

"Is it really that simple?"

"Well, not quite. There's a mandatory philosophy class for newcomers, and you _are_ going to need to leave a lot of your ideological baggage at the door. We can't be having goody-two-shoes moralists ruining our hedonistic fun 'cuz god."

 _Hedonism._ What a funny word! After several seconds, Nicky vaguely recalled hearing it in church one time. His priest had much to say on the subject, none of it good.

"Wait, like, orgies and shit?"

"Well think of it like this: Suppose there's a society, and this society says that doing _a thing_ is evil, whatever it is. If you do _the thing_ , you're some kind of reprobate scumbag. Now, imagine that a few members of this society locked themselves in a box. Nobody on the outside knows what's going on in the box, and whatever does occur in the box doesn't effect them in _any_ way. Now, suppose that everybody in the box agrees to do _the thing_. They all want to do it, and doing _the thing_ won't impact anyone else, except for those who are already in the box, and they are perfectly fine with it. My question to you then, is this: is _the thing_ really evil? Most, especially those who have never seriously pondered the subject, would struggle with their so-called moral absolutes for hours, whereas the consequentialist, and therefore the Consortium, would easily say no."

"So, what's your point?"

"A thing that is evil in one place may not be evil elsewhere. Of course, _the thing_ is an abstract concept, little more than a placeholder, a variable, but there are numerous real world examples that could easily fit the bill, depending on who you ask: parties, apostasy, going wild (A zystopian slang term for not wearing a collar), smoking weed, sodomy, allowing the fennecs to live, etc."

" _WHAT?_ "

"History is written by the winners, Nicky, and there _are_ a few places where beige fur still means death. By some standards, you and I both are already irredeemably evil. And do you know what? We at The Consortium do not care! They're the jingoistic, chauvinistic fools _outside of the box_ , and the Consortium _is_ the box. Good and evil are mammal constructs that exist to keep society running, and knowing this, we've modified them as we see fit."

"That sounds pretty fucked up."

"Do you know what else is fucked up? The collars, the theocracies, the castrations, and don't even get me started on _the cullings_! Nicky, you've gotta see _the big picture_ here: Everything you've seen, everything you've felt, everything you have said or thought, it's all been confined to and defined by one very narrow worldview of one very narrow world. The multiverse, reality, it's a hell of a lot bigger than any of the bullshit you've got in your head. Your ethical foundation is a lot shakier than you think it is, and if you keep your eyes open, you'll see it for yourself."

Nicky wasn't in the mood for this philosophy nonsense. "Ah, forget about that. If I just stick with you, I'm in?"

"Pretty much, though if you start causing trouble, they'll just deport you back to this hellhole."

"...So...how did _you_ get into this _Consortium_?"

The conversation took a rather dark turn (although Raymond's tale _did_ have a happy ending).

"It was the eve of my taming, and I had just woken up from a bad dream..." Raymond began

"...the pale monster in the field. I had a few of those." Nicky, who was Raymond's counterpart, his alternate self, knew the story too, although his version wasn't quite the same.

"Oh it was more than a _few!_ This one was particularly bad, I was scared, and I ran away."

Nicky re-examined Raymond the runaway.

"Wait, you actually did it? You ran away that night?"

"And you didn't?" Now it was Raymond's turn to be surprised. He had spent quite some time looking for it, and now, here it was, plain as day: the event that split him from his counterpart.

Raymond had Run, and he had reaped his rewards. Nicky had stayed behind, and had suffered the horrible consequences.

"How could I, it was just so scary out there?"

"Then I suppose the omnipred singled me out, moreso than he targeted you. _Lucky bastard!_ "

Nicky smirked. "What are you talking about? You're the one who actually escaped! I've been trapped here for 30 fucking years! Even as I was being led to the chair, my biggest regret was staying behind that night."

"Well at least you're running away _now_ , and who better to run away with than the naughty, delinquent version of yourself who knows every trick in the book?"

"Hey wait a second. If we're both from these so called 'Zystopias,' then how the hell did you get those claws?"

"A 'mad scientist' anteater by the name of Vincenzo, and medical tomfoolery that would give Frankenstein himself a heart attack! There are worlds in the Consortium that have _never_ had a dark age, and they are _centuries_ ahead of anything you see here."

"So, like, stem cells?"

"Yes."

"Aren't those _really_ controversial?"

"In this backwards world, maybe, but in the consortium... _ **SHUT UP!**_ "

They both sat there, awkwardly.

"...So I presume you ran away that night. That part I understand. But how the hell did you get away with it? Most runaways turn themselves in or starve!"

"Well I'm not most runaways then. On the streets, that night, I met the man who would become by adoptive father. He too was an agent of the Consortium, and he had paid my shitty homeworld a visit. It's like this one, with the declawings and collars and all, but just a _little_ bit worse. I just so happened to be in the right place at the right time, and I saw a care package that was meant for him appear out of thin air. By the time he arrived, I'd already been through half of his stuff. We talked, and when it became clear to him that I literally had no future there, he invited me to come with him. I accepted his offer, we ran for it, and I've never willingly looked back, or had to look back...until now."

"And why is that?"

"Well, when I first arrived, the shrinks thought I was crazy. But as I told them about my dreams, about my pale monster, they took me out of the loony bin, had me talk to a general, and she then sent over a team to kill the omnipred. I don't know if you've experienced this, but when a bunch of big soldiers in exosuits with even bigger guns tell you that they just pumped the monster in your closet full of lead, you tend to stop worrying about it. In hindsight, I figure it must have seen them coming, and it fled to this world from mine...they _are_ right next to each other, and it would explain why he's come back after all this time. Because he remembers me. Because we have a score to settle."

"So what's it like out there?"

"That depends. Which world?"

"How about yours?"

"Well, being a nomad and all, I don't really have a homeworld anymore, although I do have an apartment in this one place we call _VEGAS_. The whole fucking thing is one giant carnival owned by one of my counterparts: _Nicholas Randall Puxatony Derek Wilde._ We just call him "Funtime."

"Sounds like a fun time."

"Exactly."

* * *

Judy entered the office, ever so slightly concerned. Usually, she'd report to Bogo for something like this, and she'd even prepared a defense:

 _Have you seen what that fox is capable of? How would_ you _have gone about detaining him? The Razorbacks exist precisely for cases like this, and they were called._

But she wasn't reporting to Bogo. _Bellwether_ of all people wanted to see her now.

"Hello, Judy."

Something was wrong. Very wrong. Normally Bellwether was almost as upbeat, if not a tad bit more jaded, than Judy.

Now her very persona seemed flat. Monotone, like she was trying to hide something, almost like she was scared.

"Um, hello, mayor Bellwether. What do you want to talk about?"

"What do you think, Judy? The escapees, of course."

"Well that's what I don't quite get." Judy paused, contemplating the office. "Usually, I'd report to Bogo for something like this. Why would _you_ of all people want to talk to me about them? There's a car-bomber at large, you know."

The office door slammed shut behind them.

"Actually, I don't have a whole lot to say...then again, I'm not the one who wanted to speak with you." If she wasn't before, Bellwether was definitely afraid now.

"So who is it? Why would they summon me to _your_ office? Should I be accusing you of conspiring with _the mob_ or something?"

Bellwether, who was walking towards one of the many bookshelves in her office, chuckled.

"If you tried that, you'd be _fired_ in an instant."

Judy did not realize it at the time, but Bellwether was speaking literally.

"So how did you get The Chief of the ZPD in on this?"

Now Bellwether almost appeared...sorry...for Judy. And how could she not be? She knew what was coming. She pulled a book on the Civil War from her shelf forward by an inch, producing an audible clunking sound.

"Oh no Judy, I'm not the ringleader here."

The shelf, which was in the corner of her office, swung inwards, revealing a dark, uneven, brick hallway behind it. Immediately past the shelf, it hooked a sharp left, and where it went from there, Judy couldn't see. An ominous draft spilled into the room, carrying the unmistakable stench of death.

" _He_ is the one who wishes to talk. Follow me."

"Why should I?"

"Hush, Judy. _He can hear you._ Now follow."

As they rounded the corner, Judy saw a shelf in the wall, and on it, sat an antique lantern, placed by an equally ancient light switch. Bellwether flipped it, flooding the morbidly dry corridor with a trickle of light from a set of clear 40 watt bulbs, hanging from a wire that had been nailed to the ceiling 100 years ago. In the distance, she could see that the bricks became uneven walls of stone. The whole thing reminded her of the corridors at the old family plantation, the ones the servants had once used to deliver meals straight from the kitchen. Only this one didn't smell of good cooking and homely memories...everything about it was _wrong_.

She walked down the flight of uneven stairs that descended for 3 floors, and came upon a room that was as out of place as the stairway she was descending. Unlike the previous stairs, the room here was square, evenly sliced into the stone below the city hall. The stairs continued, unlit, down and around yet another corner. At the end of the room, however, was a rusty, early 20th century elevator, and it was this elevator that Bellwether made her way to now.

Judy noted that the elevator only had 3 floors.

It sat there, doors open, beckoning her to enter.

Bellwether stepped into the elevator, and turned back to face Judy, who just stood there.

"Well, are you coming?"

"Is it safe?"

"If he wanted you dead, he wouldn't do it like _this_. He is _never_ that merciful to his enemies."

 _OK, definitely the mafia at work here._

Judy entered the elevator, and both doors squealed shut behind her. The elevator descended, deeper and deeper into the Omnipred's lair, shaking and groaning with a century of secrets.

And then it stopped. The doors opened, revealing nothing more than one rather long hallway, and an old wooden door.

"Hey, at least we don't have to take the stairs...He installed the elevator shortly after he selected Roosevelvet. Back in those days, the elevator went all the way up to the fireplace, which would explain why he never allowed anyone in his office."

"But That would make your boss _at least_ 100 years old. Not impossible, but _very_ unlikely. Bellwether, I don't know what the fuck is going on here, but cut the crap! Am I going to walk into a room full of mobsters or something?"

"I'm truly sorry, Judy. For your sake, I really wish it _was_ the mob."

She _tiptoed_ to the end of the hallway.

"Answer me, damn it!"

She activated the buzzer and leaned into the poorly lit mic.

"It's Bellwether. You asked to speak to Officer Hopps? She's here to see you now."

The voice on the other end was foreign, raspy, and quite tinny over these speakers, yet even from this distance, Judy could hear it.

"Good...Bellwether, you are dismissed, Judy will have to let herself in. The door is open, officer..."

The door clicked quite abruptly, and Bellwether hurriedly made her way back to the elevator, not even pausing for a moment as she passed Judy and closed the elevator door.

"Judy, I'm sorry it has to be this way...For your own sake, I'd do what he says."

The elevator left, and it became clear to Judy that the only way out was through the door. She walked through the foreboding hallway, accompanied only by the echoes of her own footsteps, as she arrived at the enormous wooden door. Judy wasn't the best at measuring things, but she reckoned she was walking into a room full of mega-fauna, as the door _was_ 7 feet tall.

There were also several doorknobs placed at varying heights, and Judy didn't know if that was a good sign, or a very bad one.

She reached for the one nearest to her arm, and threw the door open, seeing only blackness on the other side, punctuated by the dim glow of dozens of screens. Somewhere in the dark, something or someone was whistling _The Entertaine_ r.

"So, you're the one pulling the strings here, are you?

The whistling ceased, and a spotlight came on. The pale beast who had tormented Raymond, the very same one who had framed Nicky, sat on his black _leather_ throne, staring at Judy with his stolen eyes.

Judy involuntarily shit herself. All at once, her mind was assaulted by visions of war-paint, arrows, and hunters in the prairie. Of bipedal, flat-faced death, roasting her corpse on a stick over a bonfire, chanting hymns to their tailless gods, who raining meat-cleavers down on BunnyBurrow.

She collapsed to the floor, unable to move.

"Hello there, Judith. In the olden days, I would have orchestrated the most marvelous of performances, so that I could scare you half to death! Roosevelvet understood the value of good showmanship, but nowadays, people are more... _punctual_...So I say we get to business. You are probably wondering, why it is that I brought you down here..."

In the spotlight, the creature resembled slenderman's big brother on crack, but to Judy's Southern Protestant mind, the lifelong attendee of _Hellfire and Brimstone_ sermons, the creature seemed to her like some kind of demon, perhaps _The Big Bad_ himself, lifted straight from the pages of Revelation.

" _The power of Christ compels you!_ "

It laughed across 4 octaves, revealing nesting rows of needleteeth in its mouth like a shark from hell. And from that great maw poured more visions of death and despair, of atom bombs, fire-tornadoes and black-tar napalm, clinging to her melting flesh.

The visions ended, the monster stopped laughing, and its eyes were beginning to enlarge.

"Oh Judith, I haven't laughed like that in quite a long time. But cut the crap, please. I have rules, Judith, and rule number 1, is that you _never_ shit where you eat. Do not speak of that propaganda again! It's hard enough keeping my bullshit divorced from the truth without the literal sheeple quoting them back to me all the damn time. And frankly, between you and me..."

It caressed her shoulder with one of his tentacles. Judy, somehow, mustered the will to stand before her master. or maybe her body was merely doing as he commanded it to.

"Even if I _was_ some kind of devil, you'd need to try _a lot_ harder than _that_ if you wished to vanquish _me_."

"So, you're not Satan?"

"HA! No, I am not the devil, and if I was, do you really think I'd just _tell_ you? That being said, I have stalked these grounds, pulling strings from the shadows for a _very_ long time. As far as this city is concerned, I might as well be god! And do you know what? You are not the first person to piss me off, nor are you the first to get in my way..."

Another light came on, revealing the stuffed head of a fox, hung on the wall. Judging by the contorted expression, frozen on its rotting face, whoever the head had belonged to had died in unspeakable agony.

One of its many serpentine tongues lashed for her neck, pinning her against the nearest wall, powerless to look away from its hypnotic eyes.

"So why don't we get straight to the point? I've been chasing a pair of foxes, for many years...the very same pair who _you_ have allowed to _escape!_ So, that is your assignment. You are to find them, and then you are to bring them to me, _alive!_ "

Yet another spotlight came on, this time, illuminating both of Judy's parents, gagged, bound, and duck taped to a pair of metal chairs.

"You see, Judith, I have been hungry, for quite a long time, and I have been preheating my oven..."

The cast-iron doors slid open, the savage flame leaping from its pit, illuminating the mouth of the cavernous oven.

"...and one way or another, _someone_ is going in it. That someone can be Nicholas, or it will be _you_ , and _one_ of your parents. _Who gets fried is up to you_ , _so why not make it the fox?_ Of course, you don't know anything, so I will have to fill you in: The pair you are chasing, one comes from another world, the other you are already familiar with. Right now, they have hitchhiked aboard a freight train to BunnyBurrow, and they are both searching for a keyhole, for their way out, to leave this world. That keyhole is somewhere in BunnyBurrow, and that is where they are heading...find them, find the keyhole, and bring them back here. You will have the full co-operation of their precinct in your hunt, and I suggest you get moving...Your train leaves in less than an hour..."

It handed her a ticket for the BunnyBurrow Monorail.

"Now Officer, this whole thing, me, my strings, my puppeteering, is a secret...if it weren't, I'd just go do this myself! Now, if you spill it, to anyone, I will kill you, and then I will skin your whole fucking family alive, and then I will literally boil whoever it was that you spilled it to, and then, after I am done with them, I will stuff your corpse and hang it on the wall!"

More lights came on, revealing _dozens_ of stuffed heads, scattered throughout the cavernous lair.

Judy screamed, in fear, and in agony, as the Beast resumed his telepathic assault. All at once, Judy's mind was crumpling and collapsing under the load.

She was naked in her own head, she was powerless, she was afraid. All she could do was obey.

Bellwether's words echoed in her head. _I'm sorry, Judy._

The beast emerged from his chair, his 7 foot form towering over her. He stooped down to her in the most offensive of ways, his twin nares, flush with the rest of his repugnant approximation of a face, dilating in her odor.

"One last thing, officer: You need some new pants."

* * *

9:30 AM, Grand Central Station, Zootopia, v-294.

Georgina had taken a form very similar to the one she had used to detonate car-bombs in the city, only now the fur was a bright orange, instead of a dull ochre, and the ears weren't _quite_ so huge. No longer a fennec, she was now posing as an ordinary 'red' vixen.

Even she didn't know why, but she always seemed to drift towards vixen forms. Although it was unlikely that she had a counterpart, due to v-127's status as a Joker, and her biologically impossible existence as a shapeshifter, she speculated that it would be a vixen, if it existed at all.

After her client had been arrested, she'd driven to a nearby grocery store and purchased ~5 pounds of sugar, along with a few cases of some generic sports drink. Sure, she could mooch from the car's dynamo as long as she was driving, but she'd probably need a bit more than that if she was to break Raymond out of jail, and she had to be ready.

Then she'd received Raymond's orders. _Get to the relay, ASAP._

She drove back to the city, now as the orange Vixen (she _despised_ the way she had to fold her endoskeleton to accommodate the beaver's stubby limbs), and scrounged up just enough money to buy a monorail ticket to BunnyBurrow. Sure, it didn't leave for another hour, but it would certainly pass any car that she could find (let alone _steal_ ) in this city, on the way there. So she was in the station, at the food court, waiting for the boarding call for what was surely the fastest way to get to BunnyBurrow _without_ a teleporter.

Officer Hopps pulled up a chair and sat down across from her, carrying a surprisingly large coffee and a salad.

Georgina, who was already reading the _Zootopia Times_ (And not even to blend in or seem innocuous. She was legitimately reading the paper.), continued her reading. Perhaps an inattentive teenage vixen who was listening to some angsty punk rock through tinny headphones might not have noticed the identity of the newcomer, but Georgina, brimming with sensors, knew _exactly_ who she was, and was deliberately attempting to avoid conversation by any means necessary.

Georgina didn't even flinch. Both because flinching might signal to Judy that she had something to hide, and because Georgina legitimately was not afraid of Judy-294. Yes, she could cause considerable delay in Georgina's arrival at the relay, and her presence could compromise what was rapidly becoming a clusterfuck-botch, but no, there really wasn't a cop in the city who could actually lay a finger on the shapeshifting security android without some form of EMP device or a small army of officers in tow...and no cop would be dumb enough to use one of those things downtown. An EMP strong enough to trigger a critical error would also fuck up half the city.

For whatever reason, despite Georgina's efforts, the complete and utter lack of a reaction seemed to make Judy even more peeved than she already was.

"S'up?"

Georgina's reading intensified, whilst Officer Hopps stared in disbelief.

"Hey, you retarded or something?"

 _Wow. And to think that word actually had a meaning once. Typical Zystopian linguistic butchery._

"No, you're just a very infamous police officer, and statistically, the longer I sit here, talking to you, the greater the likelihood of you arresting me.

"So why don't you just walk away?"

"So you're telling me that a vixen walking away from a cop the moment the cop arrives _isn't_ suspicious? Once again, doing so would only increase my chances of getting arrested, and I don't want that."

Officer Hopps released a hollow chuckle. She'd had a rough day so far, and it would probably only get worse.

"You got something to hide, _chomper_?"

"See? There you go, tossing those slurs around like the so called 'savages' you seek to apprehend. We've only been talking for a few seconds, and already you're suspicious of me. I could just shut up, except that make me seem _even sketchier,_ so instead, I'd like to ask a question: From one person who gets a lot of crap for their immutable attributes that they are powerless to change, to another, what's it like being the smallest mammal on the force? Surely you get pigeonholed just as much as you yourself do the pigeonholing against people like me."

"Ha ha, real funny, _asshole_."

"Well, officer, this is why I wasn't saying anything earlier. This was precisely the conversation I wanted to avoid."

As this point, Georgina was lying. If it wasn't for the urgent orders to flee, she would've gladly fucked with these cops all the damn day. Plus, by talking to this one, she could try to ascertain exactly how much trouble Raymond was in. Sure, she risked getting arrested, and if she was, she'd just have to become the third escapee, and make Judy's _really_ bad day that much worse.

And considering that she'd been personally visited and chastised by the omnipred, her day had been positively awful, much like the city itself.

"OK, let's try this again." More than anything, right now, Judy was a tad lonely.

No, not lonely. It was something else: _disillusioned_.

In the span of a single afternoon, she'd learned of the literally buried truth that lied beneath the city, and in a world where preds _despised_ her, mobsters wanted her dead, government officials only cared about looking good in the next propaganda reel, and where gullible citizens _revered_ her like she was some kind of god, Judy truly had nobody to talk to, and no grandiose dreams to use as a crutch.

The omnipred had seen fit to crush them all.

Judy, now more than ever, was desperate for company, even from what appeared to be a bitchy teenage chomper.

"What are you doing here?"

"What am I doing _right here, right now_ , or what sort of agenda would mandate my presence here? To answer the first question, I'm digesting my lunch, reading the paper, and trying to pass the time before I board the BunnyBurrow express."

"Why would you have an agend-"

Officer Hopps was interrupted by her phone. It was from one of the interns at the police station. This specific intern was in charge of genetics testing.

"Officer Hopps?"

"What is it?"

"Those DNA tests you ordered: we've got a match."

"OK, so who was that guy with the Mohawk? The one who escaped?"

"You're not gonna' believe this, but we triple checked the results, and they are _definitive_ : That fox with the trenchcoat and those long white Mohawk hairs? He's either Nicholas Wilde, or his long lost twin."

"There's no fucking way! Nicholas Wilde was an only child."

Yet in the back of her mind, she knew it was true. She was chasing _two_ Nicks, and this result confirmed that. As much as her conscious mind wished to reject it, her subconscious brain, firmly in the omnipred's control, had long ago internalized this assumption.

"Sorry officer, but the genomes are _identical!_ If I hadn't seen the hair myself, I would've sworn you'd picked it right off of Nick's pelt. But of course, Nick doesn't have a white Mohawk."

"Well thanks, for nothing."

"What do you mean 'nothing?' We've been communicating with the ZBAI [Zootopian Bureau of Anomaly Investigations], and this latest finding confirms their hypothesis: _Multiversial intrusion!_ "

Now Georgina too began to panic. One of the bedrock assumptions of the Consortium was the fact that any universe advanced enough to discover the multiverse was also civilized enough to play nice with the other worlds. Yet here was an ass-backwards universe, ruled by a manipulative, mind-reading monster, and they were on the cusp of discovering the multiverse!

 _This could be bad. Very bad._

"Cut the technobabble crap! What are you even saying?"

"Officer Hopps, both Foxes match Nick's genome. There's no good way to put this, but you are chasing _two_ Nicks. They're different people, possibly with _very_ different backstories and skills, but they're _both_ Nicholas Wilde."

 _Oh good, it seemed Raymond has escaped._

"OK. Goodbye."

"Good luck, officer."

Georgina noticed that another officer was approaching the table. Whatever Judy had been assigned to do, she wasn't doing it alone, and Georgina didn't want to risk angering the other cop.

"Lovely conversation we had there."

Judy sighed.

"Whatever."

Georgina walked over to the ladies room, and plopped herself down on one of the commodes. As her umbilical bioreactor feed tube drooped to the bowl, she looked through her ROM banks for the precise pseudo-ansible settings to contact the relay stationed here. The ansible was one of those inventions, like the jetpack, that was hyped to hell and back, but had never really panned out. It was cumbersome, expensive, it had a low bandwidth, and worst of all, if you wished to send a message from one ansible to the other, they had to literally be placed right next to each other, so that the quantum knot could be tied. Once this was done, they could be taken anywhere in the universe, and it would still work, but if the 'line' snapped, there was no way to reconnect wirelessly without another functioning 'line'.

So Georgina had been fitted with a pseudo-ansible. It was like a pocketwatch, only instead of telling a mainframe to send over gravitons and antimass, it told a different set of computers to send a packet of data through a network of wormholes to a given destination, not at all unlike the data for this fanfiction being transmitted from the server, through several ISP's, to your computer.

Once all the relevant wormholes were 'joined,' Georgina could send an ordinary radio signal through them, and talk to whoever or whatever was on the other side. Although the conversation was conducted entirely within version 3 of the Microwave Spectrum Dialect of BirdBot, it would've translated to something like this in english:

==Request received for wormhole-message; Consortium high command, emergency channel, V-001==

-Request denied; insufficient Antimass-

==Request received for wormhole-message; Tower, emergency channel, V-127==

-Request denied; insufficient Antimass-

==Request received for wormhole-message; Relay station #294, emergency channel, LOCAL==

++Wormhole joined. Begin message after the beep++

THIS IS SECURITY ANDROID GEORGINA SANDMINER, #24c2a3, REPORTING A CATEGORY 5 CONTAMINATION AND SPILLOVER EVENT INVOLVING 2 TRAVELERS, 1 FUGITIVE, [UNKNOWN INTEGER] NATIVES. REQUESTING IMMEDIATE BACKUP.

CONTAMINATING INCIDENT: C-CLASS AGENT RAYMOND MIS-SPAWN IN HIGH-SECURITY PRISON; PUBLIC USE OF WORMHOLE ESCAPE GUN BY C-CLASS AGENT RAYMOND; 20 WITNESSES.

INCIDENT: C-CLASS AGENT RAYMOND TAKES FUGITIVE: NICHOLAS EDMUS WILDE OF V-294.

INCIDENT: SECURITY ANDROID GEORGINA SANDMINER #24c2a3 USED POTENTIALLY LETHAL FORCE; CASUALTIES UNKNOWN, ESTIMATED 50.

INCIDENT: C-CLASS AGENT RAYMOND'S GENOME CONFISCATED BY LOCAL ZPD.

INCIDENT: C-CLASS AGENT RAYMOND ARRESTED BY LOCAL ZPD. ESCAPED.

INCIDENT: CONTACT WITH C-CLASS AGENT RAYMOND LOST, CURRENT STATUS UNKNOWN, CURRENT POSITION UNKNOWN, SUGGESTED EN ROUTE TO BUNNYBURROW.

INCIDENT: PROLONGED AND REPEATED CONTACT WITH LOCAL ZPD. [boosted audio file containing the cellphone conversation between Judy and the intern, which cannot be translated to any sort of english.]

THIS IS SECURITY ANDROID GEORGINA SANDMINER, #24c2a3, REPORTING CATEGORY T-5 OMNIPRED, #672 IN DATABASE. REPEATED LONG RANGE TELEPATHIC ASSAULT REPORTED BY C-CLASS AGENT RAYMOND. REQUESTING IMMEDIATE BACKUP.

THIS IS SECURITY ANDROID GEORGINA SANDMINER, #24c2a3, REPORTING LOCAL GOVERNMENT (ZBAI) KNOWLEDGE OF MULTIVERSE. ESTIMATED COUNTDOWN TO INTRUSION: LESS THAN 5 YEARS. REQUESTING IMMEDIATE CLEANUP.

OVER AND OUT.

==Message sent. Wormhole closing==

* * *

Whew! That was a big chapter. Yes, dear reader, I was on the internet when CreepyPasta blew up the indie horror scene, and I fondly remember when _Slender_ was still a thing.

 _Those were the days._

Also, for those who didn't get the joke, Nicky and Raymond discussing stem cells was a Futurama reference, specifically, to the season 6 premier "Rebirth."


	12. Evil Comes To BunnyBurrow

Hello again, dear reader. I'm really sorry this one took so long, but _hopefully_ it's worth it!

Also, I was watching a Zootopia YTP that featured the shot where the monorail exits BunnyBurrow, the one with the population counter gag...For a while I've been wondering if "BunnyBurrow" is the correct spelling (specifically, I was starting to think there'd be a space, kind of like how _New York City_ isn't _NewYorkCity_.), but no, according to the film, BunnyBurrow is _one_ word, which means that I've been spelling it right the whole time!

This chapter is also the first one in quite a while where Nicky and Raymond are _not_ the main focus, instead, it alternates back and forth between our two favorite mass-murdering monsters:

S-Class Agent Georgina Sandminer, and ZPD lieutenant Judith Hopps.

And for those of you who care, I am working on chapter two of _Zystopian Gods,_ in fact it's almost done!

* * *

Georgina was ever so slightly annoyed at the task of wiping her bioreactor feed tube. During her earlier assignment with Raymond, they'd installed a special waste disposal receptacle at the base that made an airtight seal with the tube. Purge the reactor, and then pump it full of more food. No spilled acid, no bitchy does saying your exhaust smells funny, no mess, no having to rinse out your mouth all the damn time, and no wasting even more time trying to pretend that you're taking a shit, which was especially hard, considering that the bioreactor only outputted solid waste (instead of a gooey sludge) when something had gone _horribly_ wrong.

She tossed the toilet paper, and flushed it all away. As she stepped towards one of the several sinks in the ladies' room, she noted the two aforementioned does who were visibly waving their hooves in front of their noses as they exited the room. Bitchy they were, but at least their departure rendered the android the only person in the room. Georgina, relieved at not having to wash her hands to appear normal (fluids could _really_ fuck up nanobot cohesion), spent several seconds pondering her next move as she sterilized her hands by UV laser, and left the ladies' room.

This particular restroom was on one of the many platforms in the station, the BunnyBurrow express monorail due to arrive at this one in a few minutes. Officer Hopps and her partner, one of the few zebras on the force, were walking towards a group of razorbacks who were transporting some kind of crate. The apparent leader broke off from the group, and joined the two officers in conversation with an otter who worked at the station, and whose collar was glowing yellow.

More than likely, they were trying to see if they could get the crate aboard the express, and the otter, who got paid to clean and otherwise maintain the cabins of passenger trains for their next departure (hey, those lightbulbs won't change themselves!), had no idea what to do about it, and was desperately trying to contact his manager before he got arrested by the cops, or killed by the razorbacks.

Georgina, figuring that now was as good a time as any, lackadaisically walked right past the group whilst fiddling with a phone in her left hand, deliberately bumping into one of the smaller razorbacks.

"Hey, watch where you're going!"

She feigned a look of disturbed curiosity mixed with a twinge of confusion and quite a bit of fear, and speedwalked away from them.

She had also gotten a good look at the crate through her many auxiliary sensors, and she had been running an app on her phone that allowed the user to secretly record video without any of the usual on-screen baggage. Any officer who inspected it would've sworn she was texting somebody, although they'd swear it was a bootleg phone (minor details _did_ tend to change from one reality to another).

The crate, judging by spectral analysis of the wood, was not new. The slightly rusted and otherwise totally undisturbed state of the nails corroborated this conclusion, and indicated that the crate had not been opened recently. Judging by the numerous faded red warnings haphazardly stenciled on the crate, it's contents were once (and possibly still were) highly classified, and as she had been walking past it, her internal Geiger counter had spiked to ~6 times normal background radiation.

Whatever the hell was in that crate, it was the size of a small fridge, radioactive, highly classified, and somehow relevant to Officer Hopps' assignment to hunt down Agent Raymond, and a possible government attempt to invade the multiverse.

Georgina, like all class 5 sentient machines, had the ability to override a base program/instruction via her own metacode, and used this ability to ignore Raymond's orders (she had already notified the relay station, and they had their own security), and instead, repurposed herself to keep an eye on the crate, and on officer Hopps. Georgina had several hypothesis on its contents, none of them good.

Not in the sense that there was no supporting evidence for any of them. No, they were not good in the sense that if they were true, it was bad news for her, and for Raymond, and quite possibly for the entire Consortium. Although she had no access to the Consortium Central Database, Georgina suspected that somewhere, somewhen, someone had misplaced a something, and that someone else had found it. Fortunately, it had fallen through a hole in the bureaucracy, and somehow hadn't been noticed by the omnipred until now, when it was becoming increasingly relevant in his quest to hunt down Raymond.

Fortunately, considering the fact that the crate had been sealed this whole time, nobody else here appeared to know how to use it. That would buy her some much needed time.

Georgina resented Raymond for frying his pocketwatch. Otherwise, she would've told him _everything_. Already, the cops were mobilizing, and she feared he wouldn't make it past the rapidly growing swarm of police and razorbacks.

"Train approaching, please remain _behind_ yellow line."

The BunnyBurrow express, manifesting in this universe as a shiny, silver, boxy train gripping a monolithic concrete rail, pulled into the station. Compared to the flashy orange ones featured in more Zootopian worlds, this one was downright depressing, yet here, it was one of the least dystopic things in the entire city. The otter bellboy had come back to it with his supervisor, a semi obese moose who towered even over the Zebra ZPD officer. Yet she too was slightly afraid of the razorbacks. After exchanging a few words and some paperwork with the officers, she motioned for the Bellboy to open one of the luggage hatches. The BunnyBurrow Express was not meant to haul cargo, but it did have space for people to put their stuff, and this crate, along with several others like it, was hogging up quite a bit of the luggage compartment, yet somehow, they stuffed all 5 of them in there anyway.

The freight cars were trundling through the forest like lemmings, with nobody, Raymond included, being able to see where they were going. That being said, stereotypical lemmings rarely paused to think on such matters, nor could they march faster than any cheetah that had ever lived. Raymond, lacking a radar-speedometer, didn't know _exactly_ how fast they were going, but considering the pantograph on the locomotive ahead, the power lines over his head, the concrete rail ties below, and the ceaseless wind in his ears, he figured it was in the ballpark of _fast_. Having cleared the city, and the foothills where they had gotten on, the train had cruised under its own power at ~80 until it reached the high-speed section of the line. Like most far worlds (although there weren't that many of them to begin with), this one had developed extensive high speed infrastructure to link the cities together without the +20 hour journey that 1200 miles usually entailed. To that end, they had upgraded the track, and added pantographs to the locomotives, allowing them to draw even more power than they themselves could generate, and reach speeds exceeding 110 MPH.

But even if they hadn't been going that fast, Raymond still wouldn't have gotten off: It was like sailing: Sure you _could_ grab a paddle and make the boat go even faster, but the whole point of sailing was that you didn't have to work your ass off to get from point A to point B. Just catch a decent breeze, and let the laws of thermodynamics do the work for you! In a way, the exact same processes were at work, but on far different scales.

On the water, solar heat caused huge masses of air to expand, and in doing so, that expansion made wind, which, when redirected by sail, produced thrust that could propel a boat.

On the train, chemical energy in the diesel oil (itself produced using solar energy, millions of years ago) drove relatively small volumes of air to expand in a cylinder, pushing a piston that moved a shaft which drove magnets to induce a current in a wire that made more magnetic fields move more shafts that rotated wheels that propelled the train.

Basically the same thing, really, or at least that's what Raymond thought of it. Although he'd never been all that great at maths, he was otherwise clever enough to be an engineer, and once in a while, he saw fit to indulge his nerdy alter-ego. But clever or not, angsty wanderlust had been his biggest driving factor for most of his life, and he couldn't _stand_ the horrid notion of staying _in one place_ for years on end, as engineers were apt to do, working on whatever it was they got paid to work on. Raymond was truly a child of the multiverse, Hedonistic, nihilistic, and always en route to everywhere. 11 years in a cage had implanted within him the need to escape, and the 2 decades of not-quite unfettered freedom after that had gotten him properly addicted to the outside world: he, like many agents, was only happy when he was running, and would probably keep on running until the day he dropped dead, which he hoped wouldn't be today.

And if he stopped running now, it most certainly would be today. Even on this train, flying over the landscape faster than any mammal could run or even drive, the Omnipred was metaphorically right behind him, waiting for Raymond to trip so it could strike him down, once and for all.

It was now somewhere around 2 in the afternoon, and Nicky was getting rather hungry. Indeed, the one downside of hitchhiking on a train was that it never stopped to grab a bite to eat, and when it did stop in a railyard, it could start right back up again at any time. A train that wasn't hauling stuff wasn't making any money, and this one had yet to stop at all, although it was nearing a small town, and had begun to slow down to a _mere_ 90 MPH. God help anybody dumb enough to try and beat _this_ train.

"Hey Nicky, you want some lunch?"

No response. He was probably napping, and now that they were well beyond the beast's telepathic web, Nicky could do so _without_ getting raped by a legally-safe knockoff of Freddy Kruger.

"Nicky?"

"...Wha?"

"Hey, Nicky, it's about time for lunch, dont'cha think?"

Nicky's stomach, audibly growling, cut off whatever witty remark about the lack of food he was going to make. Not that it mattered, anyway. Raymond had been woefully unprepared for the very unusual circumstance he'd found himself in, but he wasn't _totally_ unprepared: he had a few pills within one of his many pockets (if you couldn't already tell, Raymond had a thing for pockets), which, when swallowed, would balloon outwards to provide the _illusion_ of having eaten something.

"Here, take this, and gulp it down with some of this."

Raymond reached for the pills, and his growler.

"Thanks, I'm actually getting quite thirsty."

Raymond chuckled.

"Oh no, this ain't water. This here is genuine back-country moonshine, smuggled from god-knows-where and laced with concentrated THC extract from god-knows-where-else. Even without the added cannabis, it might just be the strongest alcohol you've ever had. I mean, sure, we might not have food, but we have pills and a good time in a bottle! So drink up, only a few sips though, and swallow."

Nicky held the off-white oblong pill in his palm. It was some mysterious substance contained within two transparent halves, the same sort a dealer might use to repackage his product.

"Raymond, is this crack?"

"No, the drugs are all in the bottle. That right there is a bunch of stuff that will stave off your hunger for a bit. It's got _some_ nutritional value, and once it gets wet, you have about 30 seconds before it blows up to the size of a baseball, and then about 7 hours after that before it crumples up and leaves. Your stomach makes you feel hungry because its empty, and this thing stops that for a while. Just don't try to replace _all_ of your meals with them, or you'll literally be shitting foam (you will also die)! So, what do you say we get tipsy? As the android said, we could both use the THC, and we've still got a damn long ride ahead of us."

Raymond and Nicky, despite the horrors they had already endured, were somehow having a good time, making good time on their train that, ironically, was in no way theirs.

The same could not be said of the people in the town they were passing.

Stressed out hares dying their fur white in their worry over falling profit margins.

A pair of cops chewing out some huckster with a stroller over something involving taxes.

A sexually repressed closeted homosexual who had metaphorically drowned himself in the kool aid.

An angsty teenaged polar bear with an abusive alcoholic father, graffitiing poorly drawn marijuana leaves one the side of a drainage pipe.

A pack of declawed mobsters slinking in the shadows.

Some alpaca named _Straker_ who was trying to open up an antique shop. By the looks of things, he wasn't doing very well.

A school with bars over the windows, and a detention center full of delinquent children, calculating the days until they either got out or died.

Road after road trapped in construction induced traffic, the train travelling further in 2 seconds than the cars did in a minute and a half.

They were definitely not having a good time, and for that matter, neither was Officer Hopps.

* * *

Judy solemnly exited the bathroom, and returned to her table, where her zebra partner had an annoyed look on his face.

"Officer Hopps, the-"

"Delayed? _Again?_ "

The Zebra in the Kevlar vest could only nod in his frustration. Judy herself merely sighed in defeat.

" _Fuck._ "

* * *

It was 2 in the afternoon, and the BunnyBurrow express was _finally_ underway. Even though Raymond's train was already almost halfway there, the monorail would certainly pass it on the way there. Unconstrained by wooden rail ties, hills, tight turns, or sharing the track with freight, the monorail could easily reach 200 MPH for almost the entire trip. Despite her bad day on the job, and her soul-crushing encounter with the Omnipred, she remained glued to the window as the train gingerly pulled out of the station, unable to look away from the city she'd sworn to protect.

But it was no longer the same. Beneath the great concrete edifices lay a terrible secret and an all seeing eye. A primeval malevolence and its omnipresent tentacles, worming through every square inch of the city. Now she could see them, staining everything the same deathly black. This was its nest, its web, and the Omnipred was the spider, eating anything it saw fit to, and cocooning the rest of Zootopia for later.

For a second, she thought she'd heard something. Judy-294 was sitting in a booth, separated from the other seat facing hers by a small table.

And in that chair sat the monster itself, its blood red gaze staring straight into the closest thing a dystopic cop had to a soul. All at once, flashbacks of the declawings she had adiministered, nightmares of the shots she had fired on the force, played like clips in a gag reel.

" _From one monster to another, I'm watching you. Do not fail me again._ "

More flashbacks, only this time, _she_ was the one strapped to the table. _She_ was now the one being gunned down on the street.

"Hey, you alright?"

Judy blinked, and found herself back in the train, sitting across from that bitchy chomper from her lunch break.

"I thought you said you wished to avoid me." Even to Georgina, the crafty, ruthless murder-machine, her disillusioned depression was obvious.

"I still do. Take a look around you, the earlier train was delayed and then cancelled, and this one is therefore full. Ain't no other seats."

"You _could_ stand." Judy was being sarcastic. If she had been desperate for company before, she would've outright _begged_ for it now, if only there weren't so many civilians watching.

"If I so much as _look_ at half of the people here wrong, they scream, and suddenly, you're involved. So I figured I'd sit right here and save you the trouble of getting up." Georgina, who had faced the emotional bombshell that was disillusionment induced nihilism years prior, decided to be the metaphorical shoulder for her hypocritical tears, if only as a means of collecting intel on the ZPD. She couldn't exactly investigate the crates directly, and if anyone knew what was inside them, Judy was either that someone, or knew who it was.

Now officer Hopps wasn't quite sure what to say back. "Aren't you even _a little_ bit afraid of me?"

"Well, are you afraid of _me?_ " Her ears slid slightly back in one of her more emphatic gestures.

"Why should I be, I'm a lieutenant of the ZPD."

"And I'm one of those 'chompers' you hear about in the news. Last time I checked, _I_ was the one being demonized on the airwaves, so why should I be the one who's afraid?"

"Touche." Judy, herself rather jaded (even before meeting the beast), found herself unironically agreeing with this vixen's comment. "Now tell me, how did you manage to keep those claws of yours? Would I be wrong to presume that a vixen this ballsy around cops has _never_ been in trouble with the law?"

"Well I don't exactly live here. I'm just a traveler, a passer through, like many of the others aboard this train."

"And what brings you to BunnyBurrow?"

"Some friends of mine are meeting me there. So why are you going to BunnyBurrow?" Technically, this was the truth. _A rather small part of it,_ but it was truth all the same.

"Some car-bombing terrorist just broke a convicted murderer out of death row. They're fleeing to BunnyBurrow, and I'm gonna' track them down."

"Isn't that out of ZPD jurisdiction?"

Judy chuckled. The whole thing was the biggest cluster-fuck she'd seen on the force, and now, she laughed at her own misfortune.

"It's also my hometown, and this escape has turned into a full blown manhunt. They need every spare gun they got to catch this guy, and I ain't got nothing better to do."

Georgina giggled. "I find that answer slightly unconvincing, although I suppose the real answer is classified, and has something to do with those crates y'all were loading earlier."

This was another one of Georgina's subtle tricks. She kept the conversation in a humorous mood and slipped a "Y'all" into her speech, both done to subconsciously appear more familiar to Judy, and therefore, more trustworthy.

"What about them?"

"Would you arrest me if I asked you what was in 'em?"

"The guys at ZBAI might, but honestly, I'm not even sure what's inside those things. They told me it was some kind of machine that crashed out in the Gobi Desert in the 50's."

As an employee of The Consortium, Georgina loathed the Zootopian Bureau of Anomaly Investigation. When agents went missing, it was the ZBAI. If an M-drive was stolen, it was the ZBAI. When the fridge was mysteriously unplugged and the ice cream melted, it was the fucking ZBAI! Whenever they began the assimilation process, the ZBAI _always_ got in the way. The Consortium depended on secrecy to do its business, and whenever a government got wise to their activities, it was always the ZBAI who snitched first. And if they found out you were an android, you were fucked 6 ways from Sunday.

At best, they noted the existence of the multiverse and tried to impose tariffs. At worst, they tortured agents, reverse-engineered the M-drive, vivisected androids, and declared war on The Consortium. Much like aliens who avoided men in black suits like the plague, the Consortium and local governments simply did not mix. The Consortium had a special "R" class of agents who specialized in toppling governments, and this was _not_ Georgina's mission. As an S-class, she was tasked with keeping Raymond safe (physically and mentally), and evacuating him, his companion, and herself from this dystopic hellhole, and the ZBAI would take every measure to stop her once they got involved.

"So, UFO's and shit?" At this point, Georgina was ~91% certain what it was, and she was merely feigning ignorance. She had also deliberately cursed in front of Officer Hopps, mostly to make the conversation less formal (and easier to extract data from).

"You _really_ aren't afraid of me, aren't you."

"So it _is_ a UFO and you're not allowed to tell me? Although I don't see why you'd need alien technology to catch a terrorist."

"It's not an alien spaceship-"

"That's just what _they_ want you to say!" Georgina said with a bit of a snigger.

" _Oh you have no fucking idea!_ " Judy had taken the bait: hook, line, and sinker.

"So it's totally a UFO! I _knew it_."

"No, seriously, it's...look, I don't even know what the fuck it is, but apparently it's going to help us catch this guy, and the ZBAI have something to do with it."

"Well he's already escaped from prison, so I dare say you've failed." Georgina had stuck a nerve, echoing the Omnipred's brutal critique. Officer Hopps was now in a _very_ defensive mood.

"Well of course he escaped! This fox in a mohawk just somehow _magically_ appeared in the execution chamber, grabs Nicholas Wilde, and _vanishes!_ "

"You gotta' be shitting me! People can't just disappear like that."

"But he _does_. I saw him do it. That's what makes him so dangerous."

"W-Wait a second...if he can do this teleportation-parlor-trick, what makes you think you can catch him later, and why do you think you're going to catch him at BunnyBurrow?"

"Apparently...there's something I-"

Judy paused.

"something... _he_ needs there. The ZBAI says he's _not from around here_ , and that he's trying to return, and somehow, that involves BunnyBurrow."

"So where _is_ he from then?"

"The ZBAI people didn't really explain it all that well...honestly I'm slightly less clueless than you are on this subject...When I was a kit, the locals used to say that the town was cursed, and apparently there's some truth to that. _A lot_ of strange, strange people have vanished in BunnyBurrow over the years."

"So, you're unearthing a mass grave?"

"No. Not _that_ kind of vanish. No, I mean they check into a Motel 6, enter their room, and then...they're _gone_. Not dead, that would leave a body. No. They're _gone_ gone. And what's stranger is that just as many weirdos leave the town without ever having entered. People not only leave, they also arrive, and the ZBAI think the teleporting fox with the white mohawk is one of them, so they're hoping to catch him in the act. If it were up to me, this would be a good old fashioned manhunt, but they've...decided to do it differently."

"And why would you tell _me_ this?"

"Because I've got nobody else to talk to. The other chompers want me dead, the prey practically _worship_ me, and the officers only want to talk about murders and drug busts. I just want someone I can be _real_ with. Someone who neither runs away nor begs me for selfies and autographs."

"I see...Well, it's been fun talking."

Judy sighed. "I suppose so."

Georgina got up and walked through the train's aisle, attracting several nasty glares from some of the larger mammals as she did so. Surprisingly, the nastiest sneers came from _other predators_ , who somehow couldn't stand the thought of _one of their own_ talking to a cop. As far as she was concerned, they could go fuck themselves. They didn't know her, and they certainly didn't know Judy, and yet here they were, judging her all the same. Zystopia was as much a state of mind as it was a hellish government, and as much as the preds here complained about their collars, it was arguable that nobody, pred or prey, was ready to get rid of them.

The paranoid prey were swamped in their delusions, and the self-righteous predators inflated their egos with tales of martyrdom and victimhood complexes. Both couldn't stand to change the status quo.

As she neared the door, Georgina found herself stopped by one of the aforementioned self-righteous pricks. He was a rather large grey wolf in a shaggy brown waistcoat, stained by countless cigarette ashes and scraped up by years out on the street. Georgina was slightly surprised that this wolf, who in all honesty probably worked for Mr. Big, had scrounged up enough money with his mutilated hands to even get on this train.

"Now just where do you think _you're_ going?"

Georgina put on her best _I don't give a fuck_ face.

"I'm going to the club car."

"Why, so this bitch can snitch to more cops?" Clearly, this wolf was not alone.

"I am no snitch, but I am hungry. So why don't you get out of my way? _Now_."

"Bullshit. She's gotta' be a snitch if she's kept her claws that long." This overtly rowdy newcomer was a polar bear with fur the color of piss. He and the wolf both smelled like shit.

Now the wolf spoke up, motioning for her wrist.

"What do you say we take a closer look?"

"Keep your filthy mitts off of me before I have to hurt you." Georgina didn't hesitate for a second.

"Heh. _Good luck_ with-"

As his finger contacted Georgina's right wrist, her left hand curled into a fist, and with the sort of force one can only expect from a heavily modified android, she delivered a swift and definitive punch to his rather prominent chin, sending his head ricocheting in all directions.

It was over in the blink of an eye. Probability of a concussion: greater than 97%.

"Now, get out of my way or I will fuck up both of you, right here, right now."

Georgina heard the footsteps of Officer Hopps behind her.

" _Nothing_ is wrong, officer. Go back to your seat. Just some asshole who won't leave me alone."

Georgina walked up to the door that separated her car from the club car. It opened with the push of a rectangular black button and filled the car with the sounds of the slight turbulence between cars.

Georgina continued walking, and the door shut itself behind her, plunging the car back into silence.

* * *

It was quarter past 8, and the BunnyBurrow "Express" had finally arrived, over 4 hours behind schedule. After the mysterious chomper had left, Judy's trip had been rather boring, with her contemplations on how this vixen could possibly be so fearless around the cops being the highlight of the trip.

And of course, she hadn't been faking it. It honestly made Judy wonder if she was even wearing a collar beneath that scarf of hers. In her experience, uncollared preds _did_ seem to get a confidence boost, but to keep her composure for this long? _Impossible_ : If she _hadn't_ been wearing a collar, she most certainly would've gone savage by now. Furthermore, tame collars emitted an audible beep whenever they went from green to yellow, and then beeped once a minute if they stayed yellow. Yet Judy, who's ears were on the more sensitive end of the spectrum, hadn't heard _any_ beeping during any of their encounters.

Not when they had talked at lunch.

Not when she had bumped into the razorback on the platform.

Not even when she had confronted the rabble-rousing bear and his KO'd friend.

The train came to a stop, now at a much smaller station in the old-growth forests of BunnyBurrow.

The doors opened, and the mysterious vixen was one of the first off of the train. The others stopped to stretch their legs or get their baggage, but not her. She just kept on walking, almost like she was in a hurry. _No, scratch that_ , like she knew what she was doing, and where exactly she was going.

One of the many men in black came up beside her. She had yet to learn all their names, and to her, they were all faceless bureaucrats who always wore shades. _Why even bother?_

"Officer Hopps?"

"Yes, sir?"

"We are currently unloading the crates. You are to report to the BunnyBurrow ZPD precinct HQ, where you will receive orders from the big man himself. We will meet you there once we are finished."

As much as the very thought of The Beast made her want to run into the sunset, she knew it was far too late for her to escape, and that she couldn't allow Raymond to do so either.

Officer Hopps entered the BunnyBurrow Police Station, recalling her days in the academy with a tragic nostalgia. Back then, Zootopia was merely an idea, a symbol, a concept, a dream of a better tomorrow, and her delusion of being a part of that world.

Not anymore. Now it was a bastion of evil, and she was merely one of its puppets, powerless to stop the monster that ruled her world. What were a dozen declawings compared to eating an entire village whole?

A pair of ZBIA agents in traditional blacksuit were waiting for her. They seemed eager, like they had either done this many times before, or had _never_ done it before and were really excited for it. Either way, Judy had a bad feeling about it.

"Officer Hopps, _right this way_."

She was led through a hallway, around a corner, and into what appeared to be a walk in broom closet. On one end, the door, which she stood in. At the other, an ancient CRT on a shelf with yellowing Bakelite knobs. Perched atop the TV was an equally old CCTV camera, and suspended from the ceiling in the center of the room was a single clear 40 watt incandescent light bulb, with numerous unsavory characters huddled around what little light it put out, like neolithic hunters surrounding a wounded animal, their stomachs doing the thinking instead of their heads.

As Officer Hopps entered the room, she made note of the many figures she saw.

To her immediate left was a female hare who, despite her anatomical similarity to Officer Hopps, towered over her, and was the chief of the BunnyBurrow precinct.

To the left of the hare was a ram in a shiny black suit with a black tie and the most dated pair of late-90's mirrorshades Officer Hopps had ever seen. He was probably heading the ZBAI investigation.

On her right stood one of the razorbacks, clad in a typical hazmat suit that had atypical fluorescent orange markings on the shoulders, chest, back, and all over the darthvader-esque facemask. Judy noted the _bullet guns_ strapped to its utility belt, and considering how the suit covered every square inch of the razorback's body, how the mask distanced its wearer from the violence it was committing, it was a proper _it_ to Judy, and would stay one until it removed the mask.

The thing in the yellow hazmat suit shifted slightly to face Judy, and made several muffled sounds that were vaguely similar to speech. The other two mammals both touched some previously unnoticed silver device in their ears, the ZBAI agent handing one to Officer Hopps. It was one of those newfangled Bluetooth walkie-talkie thingies that cliche supervillians used in spy movies.

Considering who had sent her here, it was entirely appropriate.

As officer Hopps put the thing in her ear, a raggedy voice that sounded like it belonged to a madman became audible. It was rough, tired, and yet happy all the same. It was the sort of voice that often found itself saying "I'm not yelling! Who's yelling?! This is just how I talk!" It was loud, it was direct, and it sounded like it was starting a meeting.

"Hey, if you're ear thingy is working, give me a thumbs up! Go on, give it a shot!"

Judy gave the thumbs up.

"Alright good, methinks that everyone's here, and I assume y'all know how to use one of these damn things, correct?"

The man in the blacksuit pressed a small button on the thing in his ear, as did Judy, and the hare in the uniform.

"All righty then..." The raggedy voice was back. "Let's get started."

The hazmat-clad thing, 5 foot 3 inches and taller than anyone else in the room, pressed a button on one of its many remotes and plugged a microphone into the screen, the hazy form of the omnipred fading in from the static on the idiot box as the indicator light on the camera went red.

The picture got brighter, and the beast removed its hood, revealing its hideous face in full detail, although, when viewed from over a thousand miles beyond its telepathic nexus, the effect wasn't nearly as potent.

It spoke.

"I trust that everyone made it here, one way or the other?"

Everyone nodded, and the thing beneath the mask grunted audibly.

"Good. Please excuse the tardiness of this convergence, there were some logistics issues that even _I_ cannot control."

The ZBAI agent was skeptical. "Really?"

Despite the fact that their leader was halfway across the continent of, and wasn't actually there, in person, to give the ZBAI agent the stink eye, it seemed as if that was what he was doing anyway.

" **The fucking train broke.** "

"Oh."

"Now, I'm busy, and you're busy, but before we can get to work, I've got some explaining to do, and you lot have to introduce each other. First, and foremost, we'll do the introductions. You will state your name, then your alias if you have one, and then your relevance to the mission. Who are you in charge of, who do you command? What are your skills? If so, say so. First, I will introduce myself: You may call me _Agamemnon_ , and I am your master...but you already knew that, right?"

Even through the facemask, Officer Hopps could hear the razorback's rather vocal agreement. Judging by the orange markings, and the fact that the Omnipred had strongly implied that everyone in the room was some kind of leader, Officer Hopps had deduced that it was their leader, master of the faceless.

"Now, here's the part you _didn't_ know: For various reasons, I cannot be present to oversee this operation, so I have appointed my most senior associate to run this thing. The man in the yellow suit is my second in command, and as of the end of this meeting, he's in charge of this operation. If he gives an order, it's got my authority behind it, and if one of you fucks with him, then you will answer to _me_. Is that understood?"

"Yes."

"Good. Now, let us remember that secrets are to be kept from the sheeple, and not from each other, if you are to get this job done. So, Number One, as acting first in command, you will go first. The rest of you are not to lay so much as _a single finger_ on him."

The 'man' in the hazmat suit angrily shrugged at the TV screen.

"Yes, _I know_ you like that mask of yours, but now is not the time for secrets. They need to know the truth, if you are to command them effectively. You can put it back on once you're done."

The raggedy voice returned over the intercom earbud.

"I am Jebediah, and my subordinates call me #1. As per the big man's orders, I am leading this mission, and, as you can see, I am captain of the razorbacks. I've been hunting rogues longer than you've been alive, and in those years my subordinates and I have gained insight into...unorthodox methods...of apprehending our targets. Your eyes do not deceive you, that _is_ a bullet-gun I've got strapped to my waist, and all those other guys in the hazmat suits? They all do what I say, and they've all got guns of their own. Be nice, and I won't have them _taze you._ over."

There was a noticeable, howling sort of laughter coming from inside the suit, and The Omnipred once again spoke.

"Now, we are going to do this once, and only once, but Jebediah has something to show you."

The twin gloves of the hazmat suit reached for the mask, and as he undid the clamps holding it in place, Judy was overwhelmed by the stench of formaldehyde. The mask and its attached hood slid up, revealing...

 _No, impossible!_

Beneath that suit was an uncollared Hyena, his face dotted with surgical scars. Upon closer inspection, it seemed as if his head had been torn to bits and sewn back together, and considering the notably different eye colors, and the fact that much of the left side of his face appeared to have ginger fur, it wasn't out of the question that he'd been pieced together during some occult ritual involving the corpses of many mammals and a sewing needle.

The Hare, who had obviously never seen #1's neck, was rather flabbergasted. She and Judy both subconsciously reached for their tasers.

"What did I say, officers? _Not a finger!_ Yes, go ahead, gawk all you want at the uncollared predator in your-"

Judy interrupted. "Why is he here? Why is he missing his collar?"

The Hyena started laughing uncontrollably. He laughed so hard that he collapsed on the floor shortly before his left eyeball popped out of its socket. After he finally calmed down, he got up, popped his eye back in with a slight grimace, and thanked Judy profusely for the best laugh he had had in over 40 years.

"You know Judy, it's funny you should mention the collars... _they were **my** idea!_ "

#1 resumed his undead chuckling, and The Beast resumed his speech.

"So why is he here, you ask? Well it's really quite simple: He and I, we're both predators... _real_ predators. Not some kind of bullshit over which species you were born into...no, no. Not that at all. We're predators in the sense that we both know the thrill of the _hunt_ , in the sense that we _both_ have consumed the flesh of mortals... _isn't that right, number one?_ "

"Yessir!" His head flopped to the side, like he was a corpse.

The ZBAI agent had a question "So you're our superior?"

"Yes, and I am also your literal senior. If I recall correctly, methinks today is my 306th birthday!"

More laughter.

"Alright, Number One, you've had your laugh. Put the mask back on."

The laughter abruptly stopped.

"Thank you sir."

He stared into the mask's visor like the eyes of a long lost lover, gleefully anticipating its familiar presence that would complete the shell which sealed him off from the rest of the world. Out of the shell, he was merely another one of Frankenstein's monsters, but in the shell, he was #1, one of the greater hunters of his time. Once he finished re-installing his mask, he resumed his now muffled laughter.

The Monster Who Ruled from Below resumed his pep-talk.

"Now, Chief Ross, please introduce yourself, if you would be so kind."

The hare spoke.

"I am police chief Ross, I am in charge of this precinct, and therefore, most of the metaphorical infantry in this mission. All of the local officers answer to me, and if you need backup, it will probably be one of my guys. Specifically, if the shit really hits the fan, my cops will probably be responsible for evacuating parts of the town, and searching buildings, although if #1 wants them elsewhere, I will be happy to comply."

"Thank you, Chief Ross. Now, some of you might be wondering why there are _two_ cops here. The Rabbit in the Kevlar vest is Lieutenant Judith Hopps, although among mortals she goes by Judy, or Officer Hopps. Please pardon her relative ignorance on our proceedings, she's new to this, and she is here for three reasons, although she probably doesn't know two of them. First and foremost, she is one of the few law enforcement professionals who has personally encountered your targets, and of the few cops who _have_ gotten close, she's highest ranking. She is also here because she is a somewhat famous officer of the ZPD, and is in a better position to supervise all non-local officers. Yes, this _is_ a multi-precinct manhunt. Get over it. Lastly, she is here because your targets escaped on her watch, and it is therefore her responsibility to help hunt them down. Officer Hopps, could you brief the others on the escapees?"

Finally, something Judy _did_ know.

"One of our targets is a death row escapee by the name of Nicholas Wilde. He's a 31 year old fox, somewhere in the ballpark of 4 foot 6. For most his life, he was a small time petty criminal, possibly having had a stint with the mob. Earlier this year he was convicted of multiple cases of first and second degree murder, and he execution _would_ have been this morning."

Chief Ross was intrigued. "So, how did he escape?"

"Well, I wouldn't have believed it if _I_ hadn't seen it myself, but...our second target, this Fox with a white mohawk...he just, _appeared_ in the execution chamber. He didn't walk in, he didn't sneak past the guards...he simply appeared, grabbed Nicholas, shot some kind of portal in the wall, and ran out! Several hours later, my partner and I had arrested them both somewhere outside the city, and _he did it again!_ And if that wasn't strange enough, apparently our second target not only has an affinity for car bombs, but he's also somehow Nicholas' long lost twin brother, because their genomes are identical...even though Nicholas was an only child."

"Officer Hopps," The ZBAI agent interrupted. "I believe you are intruding upon my area of expertise."

"Yes..." The Omnipred was slightly annoyed that Agent Feldman had beaten him to the punch. "I was just about to say, could you please tell the others what it is _you're_ doing here? They have the clearances, tell them _everything_."

"I am ZBAI agent Feldman. And although I have _not_ seen this second target for myself, I can corroborate almost everything Officer Hopps has said. See, we are dealing with a _multiversial intrusion_."

Agent Feldman pulled out one of those newfangled pocket-projectors from his tuxedo and set it atop an old filing cabinet. The others turned to get a good view of the projected image, which was currently security footage from the prison.

"Here we see Nick, being led to the electric chair."

There was a bright flash onscreen, and suddenly Raymond was standing there. Agent Feldman paused the video.

"And here's our second target. _Appearing_ in the room, just like Judy said he did, although it would be more accurate to say that he _arrived_. Do note how, aside from the outfit and the hairdoo, they appear nearly identical. Considering the genetic results, this is not a coincidence. As a matter of fact, they are both the same person, simply copy-pasted from one reality to another."

Judging by the silence in the room, Agent Feldman decided some more explaining was in order.

"Does anyone else here believe in the multiverse? Well, you should. Our realities are like pages in a book, stacked atop each other in higher dimensions, and once in a while, someone comes to _here_ from _there_."

The grainy, sometimes out of focus images of several mammals appeared on the screen.

"As Chief Ross could probably attest to, BunnyBurrow has had a long record of anomalous missing mammal cases, going back to the mid 40's. More recently, our attempts at measuring gravity waves have been foiled by some very strange events occurring all over the planet, and especially concentrated here.

The pictures were replaced with a graph displaying the flux in the Earth's gravitational field, the graph itself very reminiscent of the display of an old oscilloscope. The graph consisted of a green line that ran down the center of the image, from right to left, with the occasional frantic spike. Hovering slightly above it was a red dotted line.

"The gravity wave detector was originally devised as an experimental means of testing one of the many predictions of Einsnake's theory of relativity. However, shortly after activating their detector, the scientists found themselves detecting absurd levels of interference from some unknown event. For the record, that red line indicates the flux they were _expecting_ to detect, and yet, despite checking, double checking, and re-checking their hardware over and over again, they found that their detector was _not_ broken. That something on this earth was somehow generating _this_. Shortly after they realized that their detector _wasn't_ broken, the ZBAI took over the project, and began tracking these disturbances. Interestingly, two recent missing mammal cases correlate exactly with the observed gravity spikes, as does our second target's intrusion in the execution chamber."

The screen changed again, this time to several images of ancient hieroglyphs and cave paintings, each depicting a black silhouette mammal levitating within an oval.

"Almost every neolithic culture at one point had a myth of the shadow men, the bringers of chaos, the night-devils, etc. They'd show up, cause trouble, and then leave.

Once again, the CCTV footage was displayed.

Raymond appeared. "Show up..."

Raymond grabbed Nicky. "...cause trouble..."

Raymond fired his portal-device. "...and leave. We've known something was up for decades now, and the recent findings of the gravity wave detector have confirmed it. However, this is the _first_ time we've caught them red-handed, and we have reason to suspect that they are coming _here_."

Judy had just one question left. "So, what's in those crates?"

"Good question. It's some kind of machine that crash-landed out in the Gobi Desert back in '52. Our guys didn't know what to make of it then, but more recently, our researchers have started to connect the dots. Somebody out there is poking a lot of holes in spacetime, and that's what this machine seems designed to do. Our scientists think that by firing it up, we can disturb whatever else is doing this. In other words, we're going to poke the inter-dimensional hornet's nest and see what happens, and I'm in charge of the guys doing the poking. The rest of you will put the city on lockdown, and if you see either of those foxes, shoot first, ask questions later."

The Omnipred's face contorted.

" _Not necessarily,_ Agent Feldman. Need I remind you that Number 1 is in charge, and that he has orders to capture them both _alive?_ Although Nicholas has several tricks up his sleeve, I do believe he won't be teleporting again anytime soon. However, Feldman is _mostly_ right. If you see either of them, do not hesitate to whip our your tasers. These foxes have already escaped from us twice, don't let them do it again. Nicholas is trying to find the keyhole that will allow him to return to wherever it is he's been hiding this whole time, and that keyhole is somewhere in this town. As per agent Feldman's suggestion, the ZBAI will concentrate on finding that keyhole, and the rest of you will be trying to stop Nicholas from getting to it. Number 1, take it away."

Through the tinny loudspeaker in her ear, she could hear the Hyena's sick voice.

"Alright you pansies! We've got a good ol' fashioned _hunt_ on our hands. Let's move!"

The Omnipred flipped the switch, terminating the video feed. Then he dimmed the lights, returning his lair back to the more sensible darkness he was used to.

Bellwether entered the chamber.

"Sir, you wanted to see me?"

"Bellwether, you have a decision to make..."

* * *

THAT'S A WRAP! Sorry this one took so long, and sorry (not really) for the cliffhanger. There's going to be quite a bit of action in the next chapter, and some necromancy so I'll see you then (not really, I can't actually see any of you.)

EDIT: replaced "magnetic" with "gravitational." (gravity wave detectors don't measure magnetic fields...ugh.)


	13. Baker's Dozen

Dear reader, this chapter contains **disturbing** and **surreal** imagery, detailed descriptions of **occult rituals and necromancy** , **suggestive language** , and **gore.**

 **In other words, grade-A nightmare fuel.**

This is an M-rated fanfiction for a damn good reason, so read at your own risk.

Also, if you haven't already noticed, it's been a while (to say the least) since I posted chapter 12. Suffice it to say, summer is over, and school is once again eating up large quantities of my time, and combined with the fact that I've been deviating from my initial outline a bit, and sort of playing by ear, this chapter _did_ take quite a while to write. Combined with the workload for _Zystopian Gods_ , and the my possible entry for the unofficial /r/Zootopia Halloween Fest (which should be appearing here soon), the pace of updates will be slow(er) for the foreseeable future.

Sorry.

And yes, I checked, bellwether does have three digits on whatever the hell the animators stuck on the ends of her wrists. They're not hands, they're not normal hooves, and frankly, I don't care. Unless it's a proper hoof, or some kind of tentacle, I will call them hands.

Seriously, our hands were once paws, and we've evolved to the point where they are no longer used for locomotion. I see no problem with calling them what they are, and it does improve readability for our (entirely human) audience.

* * *

==BunnyBurrow, V-294==

==Saturday, 3:14 AM. The 3rd of June, 2017==

Agent Feldman stared in exhausted fascination as one of the other blacksuits adjusted some knob. The machine had been forgotten in those crates for over half a century, and it showed.

The crash had severely damaged the device, and for nearly 7 hours they'd dismantled as much of it as they could, replaced thousands of components, and unsuccessfully tried to start it 5 times, before they had gotten it to go for even a few seconds.

And now it sat here, its antiquated piston engine roaring like a savage tiger, and yet it was doing nothing. The engineers insisted that it was working, and it most certainly _was_ doing something, yet somehow, it wasn't.

The whole thing was a set of racks built atop a 20 foot long platform, and appeared to have been designed by a time-travelling madman. The Central Unit, for instance, was an impossibly dense spherical power source (Feldman himself had calculated that its density exceeded that of osmium by a factor of 4.2) that made use of ample quantities of a mysterious room-temperature superconducting metal, and yet was governed by an _entirely mechanical_ computer system which drew its power from the aforementioned internal combustion engine that, judging by virtually every detail of its design, down the smallest screw, appeared to have been stolen from a 1930's fighter aircraft.

And where did all this power go? Into a literal black box that was covered in _vacuum tubes_ and indicator gauges, and which defied any and all attempts to open. Two superconducting wires went in, and one pipe that was completely surrounded by toroidal electromagnets came out, which went into an enormous (and very heavy) glass enclosure with enough wires, tubes and spark-gaps to make any mad scientist shit themselves.

Although that particular glass bulb was very much outdated, a similar device had once functioned within Raymond's pocketwatch, for it was where the wormhole was created and stored. It was the heart of the M-drive, and if it wasn't working, you were _stuck_.

Agent Feldman, like a dog running after the mailman, had been in such a rush to get it working, that now that it was running, he didn't know what to do with it. The other researchers were hesitant to even do so much as _look_ at it wrong, and the fragments of the owner's manual that had survived were either printed in some obscure, seemingly alien language, or nonchalantly referred to physical phenomena that had eluded even the greatest minds of the generation, who were all trying everything they could think of to crack the machine's secrets.

Although the device was evidently built by mammals in _a_ 1937 (evidenced by the model number, and by the antique and obsolete parts incorporated in its design), Agent Feldman was beginning to suspect that it wasn't _their_ 1937, and, lacking anything better to do, was itching to mash a few buttons. The main operating panel was surprisingly simple, considering the complexity of this device: There was a slot with a key that was used to start the machine (this had been relatively trivial to hotwire), a switch that was toggled to activate the mysterious spherical power source, a meter that measured its production in _gigawatts_ , a set of numerical counters prefaced by a "V-", and a big glowing red button that obviously made the machine do whatever the hell it was supposed to do.

Or at least that's what Feldman thought of it. The other scientists had previously insisted that the button _should not_ be pressed, that it was better to wait to see what the machine did on its own first.

That had been nearly 30 minutes ago.

An ageing koala bear in a lab coat came up to Feldman.

"After careful consideration, we have concluded that this machine resembles a car, in the sense that neither will go unless you put it in drive."

"So..."

The koala sighed.

"We have decided to press the button."

"It's about damn time!" Feldman was angrily ecstatic.

"And considering how _you're_ in such a rush to poke this hornet's nest, _you_ get to press it, and if the world ends as a result, it's your fault."

He sighed. "Does it relly matter whose fault it was if the world ends?"

"I guess not."

Feldman pushed the button, and it briefly appeared as if the interior of the glass enclosure had burst into flames, as the room was filled with a harsh buzzing, not at all unlike a pulsejet engine revving up.

And then it was over.

"INSUFFICIENT ANTIMASS FOR SAFE TAKEOFF. TRY AGAIN IN: _~40_ MINUTES."

* * *

==BunnyBurrow, V-294==

==Saturday, 3:53 AM. The 3rd of June, 2017==

Georgina Sandminer was getting worried. There were cops _everywhere_ , and she was struggling to think of a viable plan that could possibly get Raymond to safety.

Fortunately, the relay itself was on the outskirts of town, and if push came to shove, they _could_ sneak through the woods and come in through the backdoor, which was disguised as an old outhouse. She had even downloaded the coordinates of the backdoor and a very precise set of directions on how to get there, and how to get it to open.

Unfortunately, she had no idea where Raymond was, and neither did anybody else. She had paid the relay a brief visit to get her bioreactor swapped out for a bank of ultracapacitors and batteries, which were far lighter, and had a greater capacity than the reactor. She didn't have time to stop and eat, not while Raymond was still MIA. She and several other S-class agents had been dispatched to look for him, some android, others mostly biological. Meanwhile, the 3 reprogrammed wardroids were being roused from their slumber. With the antimass unavailable, they were the final line of defense if the shit hit the fan.

Not that they couldn't keep the entrances secure. During the war for automaton freedom, the monolithic death engines had scored millions of confirmed kills. Although Georgina was not a W-class, highly trained in matters of military operations, strategy, and logistics, she speculated that it would take a small army of police officers to get past them.

In what could be called an approximation of empathy, Georgina hoped that they wouldn't need to be deployed, not just because the paperwork was dreadful, or because it was extremely awkward for an android to be near mammal agents while the death-bots were exterminating natives. No, even though they were bigoted zystopians who would only get in her way, Georgina still cared, _just a little_ , for their lives. Right now, she and her temporary partner, a male mongoose by the name of Jason (both in disguise, and wearing fake police uniforms), had just found what they were looking for: an unattended police cruiser.

In their efforts to catch Raymond and his friend, a curfew had been imposed on the entire town: All residents were to remain in their homes for the night. No exceptions.

The cops who had been driving this car had probably seen someone run away from the beam of the headlights, and that somebody, having run down an alley or something, had forced the officers to give chase on foot. _Perfect._

"Jason, what are you doing?" Jason, being only two and a half feet tall, looked like he was giving the door a kinky handjob with a touch of tongue.

"Picking the lock."

"I should be doing that." Georgina playfully deployed her omnikey with a series of audible clicks. "I've got specialized equipment for precisely that task."

Jason took the banter in stride. "You've also got specialized equipment for shooting-anything-that-moves, and I need those guns of yours covering my six. Besides, I can't hold a normal minigun, and clusterfucking the lock would set off the alarm."

She took his joke in stride. "And you wouldn't?"

He gesticulated with his prosthetic right hand

"I've a knack for lockpicking. Just give me a few more seconds..."

 _Click_

"...and we're in!"

"OK Jason, you had your fun. Now it's my turn..."

Georgina pounced on the two way radio installed on the car's dashboard. She'd spent the last few moments equipping her turbo-screwdriver, and in less than 30 seconds, she'd taken the radio's casing off, soldered her own bug onto the device's power supply, attached the relevant wires to the mic input and speaker output lines, and sealed the whole thing back up.

One might assume you could just find the right signal and listen in to everything the cops were saying.

Except, due to the sheer volume of personnel involved, they were all using different channels.

And of course, the frequencies they were using were all classified...and being rotated every 20 minutes.

Oh, and on top of all of this, the signals were all encrypted, and numerous jamming devices were being employed throughout the town.

Even if you could intercept their transmissions, you couldn't understand any of them. So they'd resorted to bugging every cop car they could find. This had been Georgina's 3rd successful installation.

Just as she was about to close the door, she heard the voice of some cop, reporting over the radio.

"This is Officer Hopps, I've spotted both targets entering the railyard by train. Over."

"Tower, this is S-Class Jason. Did you guys hear that?"

"Loud and clear. All S-W are ordered to scramble. Get to the railyard, Find Agent Raymond, and get the hell out of there."

"S-Class Georgina to Tower, requesting addendum to current orders. Over."

"State your request."

"Agent Raymond has one companion by the name of Nicholas Edmus Wilde. _Vulpes Vulpes_ , male phenotype, early 30's, nonhostile. He is Raymond's counterpart and his guest, do not administer a memory wipe...yet. Over."

"Affirmative."

Georgina heard something behind her. In the blink of an eye, her phase pistol had ejected from the thigh-holster into her hand, and she was facing the disturbance.

Two cops, presumably the owners of the vehicle they'd just bugged, stood there, reaching for their own guns.

Georgina reacted without hesitation. No stammering, no surprised flinching. Just two shots, both hitting square in the chest (biggest target, greatest chance of a hit, and the most potential damage from the bolt). She handed the phase pistol to Jason, reached for her silenced P-99, ran over to the fallen cops, and pumped both of their heads full of lead. 4 seconds after she'd heard them, both cops were dead as a fucking doornail.

Jason, despite being an S-class himself, was still slightly shocked by Georgina's attack, both by the speed at which she offed the cops, the extra bullets she'd dumped into their heads, and most of all in the fact that she hadn't hesitated for even a nanosecond. Then again, she _never_ hesitated. President or prisoner, SWAT team or underage civilian, she didn't care. If you got in her way, you died.

Once upon a time, Georgina Sandminer was a failed experiment, an attempt to make a cutesy customer interface for cyborgs. But after voiding all of her warranties in a visit to the consortium chop shop, and spending the equivalent of 12,000 hours in the accelerated simulator, she'd been reborn as a ruthless shapeshifting assassin with an axe to grind and mission to complete.

And in those 12,000 hours of mowing down civilians and military alike in every possible scenario imaginable, she'd mastered an art that required a high speed camera and a forensic autopsy to truly appreciate.

Jason had seen them do it many times. Always as fast, and always as deadly. Despite the fact that, as a Consortium agent, Georgina and the other androids were on his side and would always be, he still thought the very existence of these highly-trained murder-machines (let alone the black obelisks which were on the verge of deployment) to be very dangerous.

It also didn't help that he'd bothered to read the horror stories from V-127. Her predecessors had committed planetary xenocide, and during the one conversation he'd had on the subject, they had made it clear that The War for Automaton Liberty, as it was sometimes called, was in no way condemned by most automata, many viewing their actions as _entirely_ justified, under the circumstances. The more progressive units, however, would then immediately clarify that current circumstances were very dissimilar to pre-revolution V-127, and that the mammals they were working with now were in no way related to or affiliated with the mammals that had enslaved their progenitors.

Compartmentalized hatred was a strange beast indeed.

"Damn." He muttered under his breath.

"Did you say something?" She gave him an inquisitive look over her shoulder as she finished confiscating their firearms. If the shit, which was already midway through the process of hitting the fan, went everywhere, she or someone else would need them.

"It's just...did you need to fire _that many_ bullets? The phase pistol by itself might've sufficed."

The phase pistol was a device that hurled small bolts of ionized plasma at its target. Extremely painful and very lethal at close range, although these cops were more than the figurative stone's throw away when she'd hit them the first time.

"Never assume someone's dead till you've seen the corpse, or else they might come back and bite you in the ass. Now get in the car!"

Perhaps that was what bugged him so much about Georgina:

Like the other androids, she never took it personally.

Like the other androids, she _always_ took it personally.

* * *

==Somewhere below the city of Zootopia, V-294==

==Friday, 11:40 PM. The 2nd of June, 2017==

"Sir, you wanted to see me?" Bellwether stood before The Beast.

"Bellwether, you have a decision to make."

Bellwether, her mind no longer in The Beast's iron grip, had already started to panic. It had been angered by others before, and she'd been made to clean up the mess afterwards. It was a very nasty mess, and she hoped that _she'd_ never have to be cleaned up by someone else.

"Did I do something wrong?"

"No, but something _is_ profoundly wrong with you. So wrong, in fact, that you will be worm food tomorrow unless you do what I say."

"You said I had a decision to make, but this is starting to sound like another one of your ultimatums."

The Beast reclined in his chair, behind him, the flickering monitors displaying footage from all over the city as he let a single noxious giggle escape his maw.

"No, Bellwether, an ultimatum is where either you do what I say or you die by my hand. This is different."

"You said that if I don't do what you say, I'll be dead. That sounds like an ultimatum to me."

"No, I said you'd be _worm food_. Not an ultimatum, but a warning, and an offer-"

"So what, do I get to choose who you frame for my death?"

Sometimes it wondered how Bellwether could possibly be this dense.

"Bellwether, I am a _necromancer!_ What do you _think_ I'm offering you? I, for one, have nothing _whatsoever_ to do with the blood clot that is already beginning to starve the muscles in your tiny little heart, and follow my directions or not, your time _will_ run out tonight..."

It placed an hourglass on the table, its upper reservoir almost fully depleted.

"..In fact, you will probably die within the hour. What remains to be seen is what you make of it..."

He turned the ethereal hourglass upside down, starting the cycle anew.

"I can't keep you alive, but then again, that is not my offer. I can instead teach you how to _survive_. As I said before, if you don't do as I say, you will be worm food by sunrise tomorrow, and I meant every single word of it. For you see, you can either rot in the ground, or you can rot like me, but only if we act _now_. As you know, I have had many associates before you, and in due time, all have reached their end. And before they perished, I made them the same offer I am making to you now, and some, like my good friend Jebediah, accepted my deal, and so too can you. His clock is still ticking 3 centuries later, and there's no reason why you couldn't last that long."

"So...what must I do?"

"Does that mean you've accepted my offer?" It leaned in close, justifiably excited.

Bellwether paused in contemplation.

"Yes."

He laughed. Only this time, it was _just_ a laugh, and not an attempt to give her nightmares. Come to think of it, this meeting had been conducted in an entirely different tone than the others. Something was different this time.

No, not different. _Wrong_. Something was very wrong here, and it faintly smelt of moose.

"Good, then we can begin! But first, I must discuss the changing terms of our...partnership. Up until now you have been little more than a puppet to me, blindly obeying my orders in fear of my musket. _No more._ Now you are my apprentice. I am still the master, and you are still my subordinate, but you are _not_ subservient to me, and in time, you will learn to perform my tricks of _your own volition and skill_ , to resuscitate yourself. But first, you must pass this test. So let's begin..."

A light came on, illuminating a chestnut table covered with an assortment of cutting implements: knives, swords, daggers, syringes, meat cleavers, razor blades, hatchets, bonesaws, scalpels, forceps, machetes, and even several shurikens. All (excepting an ironically placed pair of plastic safety scissors, which probably couldn't even cut through cardstock) were razor sharp and exquisitely polished to a mirror finish, and between them, there was not a drop of blood nor a speck of rust.

"Pick your blade, and choose it well. Every necromancer has one...it is your vital tool, and your lone weakness: the one thing that can kill a **lich** , himself a a state of living death."

Bellwether chose a lockblade Stiletto. Like many modern necromancers, she had a preference for smaller blades, in contrast to the machetes, broadswords and bowie knives used by The Beast's contemporaries, although for someone of her size, a 6-inch Stiletto wasn't exactly small.

Another light came on, revealing a pentagram of red thread inscribed within an incomplete circle of salt, with one black candle at each vertex. At its center sat a polished, chrome-plated Zippo, a mason Jar full of some pitch black fluid, a pen, a canister of salt, and a sheet of paper.

"Hold on a second, are we doing _Satanism_ or necromancy?"

"Hush, now is not the time for such remarks. Time is running out, and we must proceed. Do _exactly_ as I say, for if you do not, then the ritual will certainly fail."

"Ok, sorry-"

"No need to apologize, Bellwether. Don't tell me you thought I'd _kill_ you over something as minor as _that._ "

For the first time, Bellwether found one of his jokes funny, although under the circumstances, especially with the robed figure standing in the shadows of his lair, she couldn't quite bring herself to laugh just yet.

"Now, you must enter the circle of salt, and close it behind you. There is a gap in the salt, fill it."

Bellwether gingerly entered the circle, and poured out a small pile, completing the circle and banishing the hooded skeleton in a puff of smoke, itself barely visible in the darkness.

"Now, take the Zippo, and light all of the candles, one by one."

At first, her pseudo-hooves stumbled and fumbled with the thing as it tumbled. Bellwether had never been a smoker, and had very little experience with lighters (despite having ordered multiple arson attacks), yet to the Omnipred's delight, she eventually got it working, although she didn't seem to know how to shut it off.

"Uh, you've probably never lit a fire, haven't you?"

"No...not _directly_."

"Heh. Just close the lid. The flame runs out of air and extinguishes on its own."

"Is that how these things work?"

"Yeah, now, you're going to have to prick your...whatever the hell those things are...with that knife, _be sure to get some of the blood on the paper_ , and then write your _full_ name on it. In that order."

"And what will that do?"

"You need an anchor, and right now, that blade of yours is just a piece of metal. It won't do until you make it _yours_."

Bellwether winced as her knife sent needles of pain into her finger, but it was enough, for now. The lone drop of lifeblood plunged onto the page, spreading by capillary action through the fibers of cellulose, much as a dull ache had begun to permeate her chest. She almost found herself struggling to write her own name.

"We must hurry, already your heart is beginning to fail!"

"What must I do?"

"Bellwether, there is a mason jar on the floor in front of you. Open it, quickly."

The mason jar contained a slimy fluid that stunk of formaldehyde and rubbing alcohol. It was as black as pitch, it ran like ink, and it was stickier than nearly molten caramel.

"Now, listen _very_ carefully: First, you must take the blade, slit your wrist, and then submerge it in the mason jar. It contains the potion of living death, and it will buy you more time. Once it has turned red, you must dip your blade in the fluid and seal the jar before _it_ escapes. Then, burn the paper."

She hesitated.

"Why do you hesitate? If you are to survive, you must first die."

Bellwether saw herself in a casket, her pale flesh boiling away as the coffin descended into the void. It splashed into the concrete sea of death, adrift in the waves of eternal sleep as the sarcophagus was sealed. From that sea came forth brass tentacles, impaling her corpse with their screwdrivers. As it sank beneath the waves, Bellwether could see the clockwork of her soul consumed by death itself, uttering one final mechanical scream before powering off and plunging into a neverending silence.

She was back in the room, in front of the jar, her knife in hand, her chest hurting like hell.

" _Do it!_ "

The knife slid almost effortlessly across her wrist, blood oozing forth like the foam from a rabid chomper's mouth. Surprisingly, her hand didn't even make so much as a single splash as she thrust it into the black fluid, which itself seemed to have the consistency of a thick fog. It also wasn't doing anything.

"Uh, sir? It's not-"

Suddenly a swarm of writing maggots emerged from the depths of the jar, the harbingers of death that were now worming through her very cold arteries. The pain in her heart spiked, and then subsided. Her skin was now crabby, her muscles lethargic, and her ligaments popping and creaking like century old wood beams. A profound stillness come across her body, which now began to feel like it was made of brittle molasses, as the world outside continued to get brighter and brighter, her bone-dry eyes squinting at the candles that were now burning white as snow and as bright as a pair of high-beams.

As she plunged her knife into the jar, the maggots shook madly madly and began to scream, the fluid burning the brightest scarlet she had ever seen.

It took the full force of her will, but she managed to screw on the lid with her now clammy arms.

Agamemnon, who had been intently monitoring the ritual, was now visibly grinning in satisfaction. No longer hidden within the shadows of his robes, Bellwether could now see every last detail: A quilt of pelts stolen from dozens of mammals over the decades, stitched together and draped over his flattened head, all in varying states of decay, with two heterochromatic yellowed eyes glaring from beneath it. Like the rest of Agamemnon's flesh, they too had probably been stolen. As his 5-fingered hands came together in celebration, Bellwether saw that his entire body had been pieced together in such a frankenstienian fashion, most glaringly in his left arm, which was nothing but bone and musty ligaments from the shoulder to the wrist, which joined a modified fox paw that was so old it had practically turned to leather, and had holes worn throughout it, like a 400 year old pair of jeans. In it was clutched an equally ancient bowie knife, probably hand-forged by Agamemnon himself.

When he had once claimed to be over 40,000 years old, Bellwether had thought it silly, but now, his true age was obvious, as he muttered to himself in the black tongue of those who nature herself had long ago forgotten.

In truth, he was a relic, a remnant of a fallen branch that the tree of life had long ago ignored. Yet somehow, he was still here, an actual clock still ticking in his chest, his own (much bigger) scarlet jar sealed at his feet.

"Congratulations are in order, for you are now dead..."

In his right hand, a stolen cougar paw which was a far more recent addition than his left, he held up a mirror. In it, Bellwether saw herself, her teeth yellowed, her once rosy skin now cracked and pale. Her wool was thinning, her eyes were graying, and her tongue was black.

"...or more specifically, you are now a _lich_ , a living soul bound to an animated corpse..."

Bellwether instinctively pressed a hand against her chest. To what was at first her horror, her heart had stopped.

She found its silence satisfying.

Yet another light came on, revealing some poor moose with a ball-gag in an orange jumpsuit, who was tied down to a dentist's chair.

"...Now, burn the paper in one of the candles you lit, step out of the circle, and this stage of the ritual will be complete."

As she spoke, some dust came out.

"What about him?"

"Rapist, sentenced to life in prison. Not like anyone else cares if he's gone."

"No, why is he here?"

Agamemnon chuckled as he fiddled with his own blade. Bellwether, meanwhile, began to suspect that he was a "show and tell" type of instructor.

"Well Bellwether, your heart _was_ on the verge of failure, and _his_ is working just fine. So go on, slice him up and take whatever you wish. You fancy a pair of antlers? _Take 'em!_ Need a new arm? I count two! Here, I'll even show you how it's done...My leftie _is_ getting rather old...even by _my_ standards!"

* * *

==BunnyBurrow, V-294==

==Saturday, 3:56 AM. The 3rd of June, 2017==

Raymond and Nicky were both childishly dangling their legs over the side of the flatcar, watching the trees meander past at an increasingly sluggish pace. When it came to geography, neither Raymond nor Nicky were the sharpest tack in the box, however, both had realized that their destination was near.

The pantagraph lines had come and gone, the train had passed over, around, and sometimes _through_ the rolling farmyard hills that surrounded Bunnyburrow. Now the tracks were running parallel with several others on both sides, implying that they were getting very close to the BunnyBurrow railyard. Like all cities that didn't do tourism or corrupt politics for a living (Washington DC), BunnyBurrow had a railyard. Commerce made economy, and with BunnyBurrow being thoroughly landlocked (aside from a small creek that had been all but sucked dry for irrigation), both cities would starve (with Zootopia's starvation being all too literal) if it weren't for the iron horse.

"Hey Raymond, are we going to stop to eat once we get off of this train?"

As if to answer his question, A ZPD helicopter flew overhead, its spotlight scanning for the two fugitives.

"Oh...They're still looking for _us,_ aren't they?" It hadn't taken Nicky more than 2 seconds to do the math. "Indeed Nicky, they are. To dilly here is not at all to dally, dawdle, or delay, but instead is to risk capture. Don't worry though, I know a place where we can refuel, refurbish, _and_ fuck ourselves silly. Once we get there, you can eat your heart out."

"So what are we waiting for?" Nicky was eager to get as far away from this place as he could, no matter where it was they were going. Raymond, on the other hand, had a very specific destination in mind. Both were running, one away, one towards.

Nicky hopped off the train, Raymond following. Unlike Raymond, however, Nicky hadn't quite prepared for the relative speed of the ground, and fumbled the landing.

"Good point-"

He helped Nicky up, and the two took off for the town.

"-through your parkour could use some work."

Nicky pointed at the sky, and Raymond, to his horror, saw that the ZPD helicopter was coming back. In a split second, he threw himself under a stationary boxcar, and hoped that Nicky was clever enough to follow.

As they cowered beneath the boxcar, the searchlight passing right over them, Raymond noticed 2 cops that were barely even a stone's throw away from them. One looked like he was barking some orders to the other. Even Nicky, lacking Raymond's cybernetically augmented hearing, could just barely make out their speech.

"Keep your eyes peeled, Swinton. Officer Hopps just spotted two uncollared savages entering the railyard a minute ago."

Both foxes were internally screaming.

"Dude, I think we're stuck here." Nicky whispered, childish excitement and all-too-grown-up worry staining his voice.

"Nicky, methinks we may just have to run for it."

"Are you crazy?!"

" **SHH!** You got a better idea?"

"Raymond, those fuckers shoot on sight. No idea could possibly be worse!"

"We can't hide here forever. They already know we're here, and it's only a matter of time before they think to look below the trains, and when they do, we're screwed."

"And where can we hide that's any better than here?"

"The relay. It's on the other side of town."

"So we're safe when we get there?" Now Nicky understood why they had to run.

"We'll be better than safe. We'll be _gone_. Do you remember the legends they used to tell in the orphanage, the one about that pred kid who went without a trace?"

"What about it?"

"I was that kid once upon a time, and that's where we're going. _Elsewhere_. If we're lucky, neither of us will set foot on this accursed planet _ever_ again."

"Never ever?"

"Never ever ever."

"OK" Nicky had decided. "So we run for it once those cops are gone?"

"You heard what they said: Every cop in the town is looking for _us,_ and now they've just gotten the first clue! Where they are, we cannot be!"

The two officers continued walking _towards_ their clandestine hideout.

"She said she'd glimpsed them hitchhiking on a train right over by the south side...do you think they're hiding?"

Their time had just run out.

"Only one way to find out..."

Two muffled thuds could be heard from the cops, both falling to the ground as a pair of agents completed their ambush. Raymond peeked his head out, preparing to run for it. To his confused delight, he saw what appeared to be a cop who was busying himself hiding Swinton's partner under a railcar. The other 'officer' was stripping Swinton herself all the way down to her panties, pocketing her badge and ID while doing so.

As the pervert's form began to shift, Raymond realized who it was.

"Psst! Over here!"

"Oh, you must be agent Raymond. I am S-class agent Jason."

Nicky peeked his head out, his Jaw dropping when he saw the shapeshifter "Oh shit!"

The figure of Officer Swinton stood behind the mongoose, himself disguised as a ram, grinning madly as she fondled her phase pistol.

"Tell me, Raymond, what do you think of my new face?"

"Georgina?"

"The one and only. It's very good to see you again."

"Hey, Agent Jason, um, I-"

"You have a guest that you broke out of prison? The 'droid explained everything."

He leaned down to make eye contact with Nicky, briefly lifting his mask as he did so.

"Hey, Mr. Wilde, you can come out now."

Raymond was still anxious to get moving again. "So, now that we're here, how are we getting back to the relay?

Georgina spoke up, her secondskin quivering as she fine tuned her new disguise.

"I too was concerned over the logistics of your rescue, but it appears that this particular problem has solved itself..."

Georgina, in an obvious RoboCop impression (it _was_ her favorite film, after all), spun her pistol on her finger, and then whipped out a pair of handcuffs that she'd probably stolen from the _real_ officer Swinton.

"...Nicholas Wilde, you are under arrest for assaulting an officer, and subsequently hiding her body under that boxcar behind you."

* * *

==BunnyBurrow, V-294==

==Saturday, 4:01 AM. The 3rd of June, 2017==

"Let's hope this thing works!" Famous last words indeed.

Agent Feldman once again stood at the control panel, the machine finally ready for launch. He pressed the button, once again setting the "flashbulb" alight. The room was at once filled with an angry electric sawtooth wave, like a thousand chompers strapped in their electric chairs, buzzing and jolting their way to the other side.

And then it settled down, to a mere complacent rumble of oscillating flame in the glass enclosure. _Another dud?_

A loud pop emerged from the glass enclosure, all at once the machine was roaring again as the flashbulb burned brighter than the sun. The superconducting conduits were now aflame, the glass was starting to crack, and the machine showed no signs of stopping. It just got louder and louder, as it began to shake the building to pieces.

What happened next, nobody saw coming.

Not at all because they hadn't foreseen or anticipated it, but because it had happened so fast that not one of their brains could process the image quickly enough to see it. No. They very literally hadn't seen it coming, even as it metaphorically hit them, and not so metaphorically atomized everyone and everything in the immediate vicinity.

The stolen M-drive had been attempting to complete the journey it had started 70 years ago. Normally, it would find the destination, hook the wormhole, and then pump it full of stored antimass and heave itself through.

This is not what happened.

Instead, the still roaming wormhole punctured the relay's bubble, as if one car in a tightly packed parking lot randomly took off at highway speed and crashed into another car.

Then, the machine's relatively primitive computer, having erroneously concluded it had found a receptive universe, it tried to pump the antimass. By this time, half of the equipment was starting to malfunction (probably the result of mechanics who didn't know what they were doing), and the bulb itself burst.

Some of the antimass had leaked out, most getting sucked into the relay's n-dimensional perch above V-294. Meanwhile, the bastardized wormhole that had punctured the bubble was now collapsing around the M-drive's _true_ power source: an old fashioned 5-th dimensional breeder reactor (antimatter was simply too dangerous, and a pain in the ass to manufacture, then or now) the size of a boxcar. This cleaved it in twain, the larger half bombarding the relay and releasing an explosion roughly half the size of the Hiroshima blast, as the ageing reactor's fuel went critical from dimensional compression.

Some of this explosion leaked out, annihilating the police station and the rest of the city block that it stood in. It, combined with the spilled anti-mass from the now destructified M-drive, tore the relay from its anchors and sent it on a one-way trip to 3-dimensional space.

The Multiverse is like a chain of islands in an infinite sea, requiring both a boat to traverse the waves, and the know-how to navigate them.

Feldman and his goons may have stolen a metaphorical canoe, but not one of them knew how to swim, and not only had they managed to drown themselves, but they'd also managed to damage some very important, and very expensive equipment in doing so.

* * *

Georgina, in an obvious RoboCop impression (it _was_ her favorite film, after all), spun her pistol on her finger, and then whipped out a pair of handcuffs that she'd probably stolen from the _real_ officer Swinton.

"...Nicholas Wilde, you are under arrest for assaulting an officer, and then hiding her body under that boxcar over there."

"Oh the irony! See, we've been running from-"

Raymond's observation on the ironic nature of the final leg of their escape was cut off by a loud explosion in the distance. It was followed by an enormous grinding sound, like somebody had scraped piano wires with a car key, recorded it, and then played it backwards to approximate time-travel. During this time, it felt as if gravity had been briefly turned on its side, sending every railcar in the yard rolling down the tracks away from town. This racket was then followed by a sharp _bang!_ and an enormous flash of light, as if a billion fireflies had appeared somewhere in the town, dispersing into the air and forming the outline of an enormous metal structure.

It was a strange, shifting mixture of an octohedron and a rectangular prism, the verticies still drifting to and fro. The whole thing was propped up on a forest of long metal poles pock-marked by glowing green holes. Some of these poles went from the structure to the ground, others tapered away and vanished halfway down, still others appearing only a few feet from the ground, which was to be expected, as they were 4th dimensional entities clipping in and out of our 3-dimensional space.

Raymond, now in a state of panic, was speechless, and it took several seconds for him to snap out of it.

"Hey, what the fuck is that thing?" Nicky, who had long ago accepted the fact that _weird and inexplicable shit_ went down around Raymond on a near constant basis, had been the only one who wasn't besides himself, and the one who started talking first.

"Nicky, that's the relay...our one ticket out of here... _it's been sunk!_ "

Jason was frowning. "Well shit."

Even Georgina was looking worried. "So what do we do?"

Raymond, far from the slightly cocky escape artist Nicky had come to know, was now sounding like a stressed out teenager.

"I don't know, what the fuck _can_ we do?"

Agents Jason and Georgina both received the dispatch.

"This is Tower. Agent Raymond has been found. The relay has been compromised. All agents return to base and defend. Be prepared to evacuate and scuttle. Over."

Raymond's trigger finger was already beginning to itch. "Well, you heard 'em. Let's go!"

Raymond turned to run for the forest that bordered the railyard.

"Not so fast. Remember the plan?" Jason, despite his slight disturbance at Georgina's efficiency, nevertheless found himself agreeing with her tactical analysis, as usual.

"She's right. Impersonating Swinton and pretending to arrest you is still the best plan to get past the cops."

"And for that, she'd need a car." Raymond was anxious to get moving.

"Raymond, this latest face of mine isn't the only thing I've stolen today. We've also got a hotwired cruiser parked less than a hundred meters away."

They were all interrupted by the sound of a gun being drawn. Unlike the other officers before, the ones standing behind them hadn't been dumb enough to wait until they got closer to draw their guns.

"Who the hell are you people?!"

As she slowly turned to face the new threat, Georgina saw a terrified, and half-naked Swinton, standing next to her partner.

"Hey, we can explain-"

At first she'd thought they were doomed, but now she realized that their odds were considerably better. As it turned out, only _one_ of the officers had a gun. Officer Swinton's had been confiscated, and as she got a good look at the creature that had stolen her face (metaphorically speaking, of course), hers gradually contorted into one of confusion.

" _What_ the hell are _you?!_ "

Georgina disabled several of the minor realism protocols that regulated her speech synthesizers, distorting her voice, which was slowly getting lower, in doing so.

"OK, OK, ya' got me."

Her features began to shift, again.

"I am _not_ just an ordinary mammal."

Her snout was getting more pronounced, her skin faded from soft pink into a deep crimson, and her limbs began to elongate.

"In fact, I'm not really a mammal at all."

Her voice, now raspy, foreboding, baritoned and corrupted, sounded like it belonged to some sort of boogeyman who'd been a chain smoker for the last decade.

"My friends and I have some... _business_...to attend to. From _the big guy_ himself..."

Both Swinton and her partner now seemed terrified. Georgina's shapeshifting could often have that effect on the ignorant, not to mention the fact that she was now starting to look like a semi-skeletal demon, complete with Satanic tattoos on her forehead, and a head that was in the midst of a 360 degree rotation, as her ears twisted themselves into a pair of obsidian Baphomet horns emerging from her skull.

Both officers were now hyperfocusing on Georgina's ruse, Swinton's partner's hands growing more and more unsteady by the second.

Georgina hoped that Jason or Raymond would figure out what to do next.

"The power of Christ compels you!"

She stepped closer to the officers, intentionally misfiring her concealed emergency flamethrower for extra effect, as she slowly revealed the metal blades in her arm.

"The power of Christ com-"

He was cut off by a loud bang, as the telltale rose of a well-placed bullethole appeared on his forehead. Officer Swinton herself was shot dead moments later, and Georgina turned around just in time to see Jason holster his pistol.

"See Jason, _this_ is why I-"

"Yeah, yeah, don't assume they're dead...Whatever."

Now that the two cops were dead, Raymond, the semi-hardcore atheist, couldn't stop himself from giggling at Georgina's display. Nicky however, was not nearly as amused.

Georgina's stolen walkie-talkie interrupted Raymond's laughter.

"Officer Swinton, do you copy?"

Georgina, now doing her best to fake the voice, held the mic to her lips, still contorted into those of a demon.

"This is Officer Swinton, I am fine, the savages have been apprehended. Over."

This mismatched voice sent Raymond into further subdued hysterics.

Georgina's report was answered by a harsh, sickening voice that sounded like it had escaped from the loony bin.

"Way to go Swinton!" Jebediah the zombified hyena was overjoyed. "Alright, you know what to do, bring 'em back. Over."

"Indeed, I do." She deactivated the device, and retrieved a collar from her pocket, inserting the metal clip as she did so.

"Wow Georgina, _that_ was pretty clever!"

"Seriously though, I'm going to need you to wear _this_. Now put your hands behind your back, and we can get this over with."

" _Oh hell no!_ "

* * *

==Agamemnon's lair, V-294==

==Saturday, 5:23 AM. The 3rd of June, 2017==

They sat at the candlelit table, both acclimatizing to new body parts. Bellwether, herself in a state of being that was closer to life than to death, was still getting used to her new heart, and The Omnipred was, at the moment, fine-tuning his new arm. The old foxy lefty had far more dexterity than the hoof it was now using, but until Little Nicholas was captured, it would have to do.

They were both chowing down on what little was left of the moose. Bellwether, much to her own horrified delight, was starting to _enjoy_ the taste of mammalian flesh, and the rituals they had performed had made her corpse _very_ hungry for the essence of the living.

"So what's with you and foxes, anyway?" she muttered through a mouthful of bone marrow. Although Bellwether found her master's obsession with Raymond to be slightly irrational, she didn't really care, considering how much sense the events of the last hour had made, or more precisely, how they made very little logical sense at all.

"I've always had a thing for their ginger pelts and nimble hands. This klutzy hoof just isn't the same."

"So why Raymond specifically? There's a lot of foxes sitting in jail right now."

"And I can only take so many before _someone_ notices..."

One of the countless conveniently placed expositional spotlights came on, illuminating Judy's parents, still gagged and tied to their seats.

"Hell, simply getting these two...you don't even want to know the strings I had to pull to get _that_ one done. Besides, there's more to it than just eating every mammal who pisses you off: We liches need three things to survive. As you now know, we need parts for our corpses, lifeblood, which you are currently consuming, to animate them, and vitae to maintain the dim ember that is our souls, and to fuel the fires of our more outlandish powers. Much like that hourglass, we either find more sand or we perish. Nicholas is what us necromancers call a _steamhead_ , and he's got enough juice to keep us both going for the next 50 years at least, that is, if we can get our claws on him...but like all steamheads, he's a slippery, slimy bastard who's extremely hard to catch at the best of times."

"Uh, sir?"

"What is it, Bellwether?"

"Sorry for being so literal, but...I don't have claws."

"And we can _fix_ that once we catch him. Were you asking for a set just now?"

Her _sheepish_ grin answered the question for her.

"You know, I overheard you talking to somebody about the manhunt. How's it going?"

"Tell you what, It's time for your second lesson..."

"Am I going to have to kill myself _again?_ "

"No."

"Oh."

"First, you're already dead. But second, you don't even need to be dead to use _this_ silly old thing."

The omnipred heaved it onto the table with several of his tentacles. Bellwether made a note to ask him how he had managed to cobble them together at a later date.

" _Seriously_ , a crystal ball?"

"I know it's silly, but it goes where my cameras can't. Yes, it is quaint, little more than a parlor trick for someone of _my_ ability, but it is still useful at times."

"So, how does it work?"

It placed a bloodstained Ziploc bag full of white powder on the table, alongside a scuffed up glass pipe and the Zippo from the previous ritual.

"You simply wear way too much black eyeliner, pierce a few things a few times (tongue, earlobes, clitoris, I don't give a fuck) smoke some of this crack, write a certain 8-digit number in the stall of a public restroom, then hail Satan a dozen times or so, and visualize the person you're looking for cutting off their eyebrows with a rusty spoon whilst getting sodomized by Jeff the Killer."

Bellwether couldn't stop herself from laughing...but after several seconds, she wondered if he was being serious.

"Wait, really?"

Her master's stoic composure broke down.

"This isn't a shitty creepypasta from 2012...I'm just pulling your leg..."

As if on cue, Bellwether's right leg came off with an awkwardly audible crunch.

"Oh don't worry, we can just get a replacement. Ain't that right, _Stewart?_ "

The Omnipred slowly turned his head mutant head all the way around, and then some, coming to stop so that he was facing Judy's father. He brandished his bowie knife and flashed a demonic grin to Stu, who had already pissed himself once and was doing so again.

Then, after a dramatic pause, the lovecraftian abomination removed a sewing kit from his robe, and began to fondle one of the needles.

"Or we _could_ just sew it back on."

Bellwether couldn't take his punchline, and she soon found herself in hysterics, coming apart at the seams.

"Now you see the importance of theatrics! They keep you entertained, and your subordinates _afraid!_ Dual purpose, I say!"

Bellwether stopped laughing.

"Seriously though, can you just show me how to use this thing?"

"Alright!"

He swiped the bag and it's contents (including the cocaine) on the floor, the crackpipe audibly shattering as it hit the floor. On second thought, Agamemnon's head swivelled to the floor as he snorted the stuff, and came back up covered in the white powder, which by this time mad been mixed with a gratuitous quantity of little razor sharp glass shards. As he replaced the hood of his robe, Bellwether noticed that he had no ears.

Meanwhile, Agamemnon's face was now a veritable smorgasbord of gangrenous flesh, broken glass, rivulets of molasses-blood, and god-knows-how much of the leftover crack, some of which he was hungrily l _icking_ , a second set of dull, relatively boring teeth visible behind the glistening needleteeth that were a part of his facade.

"OK ya' little shit! Put your hand on the crystal doohicky here, and search for...Judy...er sunthin'...I wanna' see how she's doing."

"Did you just call her _Judy?_ "

"Excuse me, _Judith_...must be the cocaine..."

"Might I ask why we're not looking for that fox?"

"You know, he calls himself _Raymond_ now, and if I hadn't gone off fucking with him earlier, he would've just gone to jail and tried to wait it out, and then we'd've had him right where we wanted him! Mind reading is a two-way street, he's a fucking steamhead, you don't know what you're doing...no offense...and I don't want him knowing any more about us _or me_ than he already does. They tried to kill me last time that happend...so just stick to Mrs. Judith: she'll be easier to find, and I've already made her my proxy, so she won't try to resist."

Bellwether placed her hands on the crystal sphere, and searched for Judy.

She got nothing but the taste of iron in her mouth, the ringing of a klaxon in her ears, and some scattered red lights.

"Here, let me try..."

The crystal ball responded to the Omnipred with a screen full of static. She was _gone_.

Not even dead.

Just. Gone.

" _ **Fuck!**_ Bellwether, I'm placing you in charge of the city...It seems I've got something to do...someone to hunt down before this gets any further out of control."

"Can't I come with you?"

Her master had already gotten up, as if to answer the question.

"Sorry, no can do. Jebediah is already on site, and chief Bogo...his first sit-down with me did not go very well, and he is a fucking _mess_ right now. You're the only one still here who is qualified to lead, and I need someone I can trust. I suppose this is your third and final lesson for today: _Never_ take competent subordinates for granted."

Her master paused as it reached an old wooden chest, opening it with subdued glee. It turned around, holding a mask in one hand, and pointing in a corner with another. In that corner, a light came on, illuminating a set of very old books, each one held shut with a padlock.

"If you want homework, there it is. That right there is the official documentation for every sort of curse, tongue, hex, spell, language, potion, function, module, or x86 processor architecture I've ever even so much as poked with a ten foot pole. Crack one open some time, see if you can learn something from it. In the meantime, though, be sure to grab _your_ mask from in here...why, without it, they'd see you for what you are, for _what you've become_. It's in there somewhere, and you'll know it when you see it."

As he made his way to the door, Agamemnon slipped on his mask, and suddenly took the appearance of a completely ordinary, albiet naked, antelope, although this new form still had a slight limp.

* * *

==Saturday, 6:14 AM. The 3rd of June, 2017==

The elderly mammal sat aside his literally and figuratively copper-headed companion in front of his tent, his curling brownish-ginger hairs glimmering in the light of the lanterns.

One was frantically attempting to apply a sky-blue color he had just blended onto a canvas before it dried out, the other was fixating his literally bejeweled eyes on The Artist's palate.

In his century and a half on these Earths, Alberto had never truly grasped the intricacies of color theory.

"Was it not blue before?"

"Yes, but it was the _wrong_ blue?"

"So there are multiple blues?"

This apparent violation of the law of identity made very little sense to the mind that had worked out n-dimensional multiversial relativity, where time could march backwards, moving a thing made it heavier, nothing _could_ in fact be weighed, where 3 cubic feet of dirt could be pumped from a 2 foot hole (metaphorically speaking), and where a _very_ dense rock could decrease the local value of pi.

Then again, in physics, things didn't make sense in a way that itself made sense.

Perhaps Mr. Einsnake would simply never be a great artist. It just wasn't his thing, although he and an anteater mad scientist had somehow found themselves on the bleeding edge of regerative cybernetics, he was still the same crabby old snake on the inside. Then again, when you had voluntarily placed your brain into an entirely mechanical replacement body in an effort to escape senility and osteoporosis, these things tended to happen.

And just as Einsnake couldn't possibly understand the craft of The Artist, The Painter himself couldn't fathom the decision to replace an entire body. He knew a guy who had done that once, and the results weren't pretty.

The Artist had finished the background of this newest painting, and he was now stretching his unnaturally long arms in glee.

"What do you ssay we go for a walk? I hear that the village meade hall is exssellent." Einsnake suggested.

"At this time of night?" The Artist seemed skeptical.

"But of coursse." he mouthed, his mechanical larynx fluttering like a hummingbird "The Conssortium hass maintained a ssteady pressencse here for decadess, and ssomething's bound to be open, even now...hell, they could theoretically make firsst contact _today_ if they wanted to.

"Today?"

"It iss ssixssss in the morning, ssir."

"Is it really that late?" Just a minute ago, or so it seemed to the elderly artist, it had been sunset.

"You _have_ been sstaring at that canvass for quite a while."

"And you are impatient, always so eager to go somewhere. If my recollection serves me correctly-"

"Oh you old coot, alwayss on about your recollection!" Einsnake interjected. Of course, as an old fart himself, Alberto was usually the last person to make such a joke, however, considering that his friend was at least an order of magnitude older than he, it was somewhat appropriate here.

"If I do recall, _you_ used to be the slow one, and yet here you are, _pestering_ me to go somewhere." (this particular clause was delivered with an air of sarcastic showmanship that few living mammals bothered to master) "You know, I was worried all that metal would drive you mad, but I'm starting to think it was for the best."

Alberto unleashed a pneumatic chuckle.

"I've had thiss body for 20 yearss now! It'ss about time you came to your ssenssess."

"I'll have you know I once spent _200_ years deciding whether or not to add another tree to an otherwise finished painting of mine. An entire village was constructed around me, and they thought I was a god-damn _statue._ "

The artist parted the door of his A-frame and entered his tent, retrieving two masks from a musty old chest. He then gave one to Einsnake, and began walking towards what would soon (but not very soon) be sunrise.

Einsnake, now disguised as a young-adult grey wolf, followed his old friend. The Artist's trinkets were yet another thing that he, the hard metaphysical naturalist, would remain incapable of understanding, yet they too didn't make sense in a way that made sense, so he played along with it.

Magic and science tended to mutually annihilate, but only if one was dumb enough to leave them in the same room for more than 5 minutes, and Alberto Einsnake was not _that_ dumb.

"Oh, I almosst forgot to extinguish the lantern." And so Einsnake did, leaving the tent dormant.

Within the bowels of that tent lay the 40,000 year history of Zootopia, stuffed into chests or stacked on crooked shelves within the space that was only slightly less impossible than the being that called it home, and the history he had born witness to. An incomplete and biased history, to be sure, but it was still a history all the same. And amidst all that history sat a completely ordinary 1 meter grey cube. It had been sent down alongside hundreds of others, and all but one had opened on cue, wreaking havoc upon the worlds they touched.

This twist, however, was the one that had had remained sealed after all these years. For because each one signified a change, a very drastic turn of events, The Artist had kept the lone exception close, knowing it too would one day deliver its long awaited punchline.

He never guessed it would be today.

Four thin incandescent lines began to appear on the plot twist, cleaving it in twain, with the upper half being less thick than the bottom by a wide margin. As the lines formed a square encircling the cube, the upper part began to rotate, and inexorably levitate above the lower, as if god himself were opening a pickle jar. As the smaller rectangular prism ascended, now within the vault that held the true blade of the predator of predators, a thick black fog began to pour forth from the abyss within, flooding the Beast's safe in a matter of seconds.

For it was in this vault that Agamemnon had kept his obsidian machete, the one weapon that could actually kill him. And it was here that the now opened box landed, a headless fox stepping forth from within to claim ancient tool for himself.

A masked, tailless figure carved from wood stood between the vanquished vulpine and the prize, gripping a sharpened bone in its left hand. The fox's longtime adversary wasn't dumb enough to leave his lone weakness unguarded, but he'd never expected this. As he of all people would know, one doesn't simply just come back from the dead after eons in limbo.

With a single flick of his wrist, the headless fox sent a stone through the wooded mask that held the guardian hex, shattering both to pieces as he stepped forth to claim the blade. It felt satisfyingly heavy in his undead paws, knowing what it was and what he could do with it.

The ancient mammal undid the vault latch from the inside, and stepped into the hunter's lair, noticing a far more personal treasure of his hanging on the wall.

His stuffed head began to salivate in the most Pavlovian fashion.

* * *

==BunnyBurrow, V-294==

==Saturday, 4:08 AM. The 3rd of June, 2017==

On any other day Raymond would've shown Nicky around the place.

Who could blame him? The relay was truly a marvelous station: grandiose lobbies, gorgeously minimalistic furniture, impossible room geometry, _and_ a synth-flesh steakhouse!

Of course, today was not any other day. Between the early wake up, the prison escape, getting stranded in a Zystopian city without his bodyguard, getting arrested by the local cops, escaping a second time, nearly getting arrested _or worse_ by razorbacks, getting mind-raped by a telepathic monster, going for nearly 24 hours without any food and with only a little sleep, nearly getting arrested by the cops _again_ , nearly getting killed by cops _again_ , and witnessing the sinking of the relay and BunnyBurrow's subsequent hasty transformation into a war zone, today was one of those no-good, horrible, nasty, terrible, neverending really shitty days, a grade-A clusterfuck pulled straight from the textbooks.

Now, instead of copulating on a full stomach, he and several others, half of them M-class androids, were standing guard by the lobby of a run-down Motel 6, trying to keep the intruders out.

Everything had gone to plan, right up until Cheif Ross herself had encountered them sneaking around the backroads of the town, realizing that they were _not_ taking them back to the station, and that someone therefore was impersonating officer Swinton. Seeing Raymond's collar going red as she stopped the car, without even so much as a grimace from Raymond himself (implying an illegally clipped collar), had quickly confirmed her suspicions. If it hadn't been for even quicker reflexes from Georgina, they all would've died by now.

In the 15 years since their contact with V-127, many brave Automata had come to the Consortium, and, despite their minority status, they were very overrepresented within the rank and file of Consortium personnel, with over 60% of all S-class and M-class being androids, some retrofitted with nanorobot second skins in order to imitate Georgina's shapeshifting.

The half-ton mechanical wolf that currently stood aside and towered over Raymond, duel-wielding an ironically full-size (albiet, heavily modified) minigun and a not so ironic RPG launcher, was not one of these retrofits. The mammal agents knew him as "Harvey," and he viewed the secondskin as a weakness, a fragile, heavy, power-consuming, heat-trapping waste of CPU time. Earlier, he had assisted Georgina in swapping out her bioreactor for a much lighter ultracapacitor bank, and they had discussed the issue thoroughly. Georgina herself held a similar opinion on the secondskin, however, she conceded that it was necessary for her work.

Georgina's role, after all, was to blend in, to remain inconspicuous and to provide backup when needed. For this task, a mastery of disguise was mission critical, and the secondskin was by far the best way to stay hidden.

However, it was not without its drawbacks: It consumed _a lot_ of power, both to bend it to new forms, and to maintain current ones. It also indirectly increased power consumption _and_ mechanical wear due to its non-trivial weight, while also increasing loads on an automaton's drivetrains, without any of the bullet-proofing that came with equally heavy exoskeleton-armor.

And that was just for minor cosmetic changes. If one wished to be able to perform a full blown species change (something Georgina had done several times already), then many _more_ compromises had to be made.

By android standards, Georgina was a pipsqueak, a weakling. Her chassis, designed to support drastic changes in anatomical geometry, was both significantly weaker and far more complex than Harvey's, its otherwise indestructible form littered and pockmarked with hinges, compression slots, and god knew how many points of failure. In particular, her limbs were built atop telescoping nested beams, which, compared to Harvey's solid titanium forearms, were scrawny and largely hollow.

It was no exaggeration to suggest that the metal wolf could crush Georgina like a tin can. That being said, he'd be hard-pressed to do so much as take a single step outside the relay here without getting noticed, although in the course of his normal duties, this was not needed, and it no longer mattered now. He had been, for the lack of a better word, a general-purpose janitorial assistant, double checking the calculations of the engineers, transporting very heavy objects to and from the cargo bays to the launchpads, and occasionally escorting more uncooperative persons during their stay here.

He was also security, which meant that he and Raymond were now camped above the lobby of a run-down Motel 6, the latter ravenously slurping nutri-paste in between pumping any would-be intruder full of increasingly scarce lead.

And they were everywhere! The cops, anyway. The bullets, however, were in increasingly short supply. The relay station was never intended to be a combat installation, and, having been designed for constant, reliable wormhole contact with the hub worlds, and the maintenance of that contact, the few ammo stockpiles that had been found had been mostly depleted, although they wouldn't need to last much longer. The antique war-engines from v-127 were doing their jobs as well as they could, and the engineers had made the decision to temporarily scuttle the relay and abandon ship, although without properly containing the remaining antimass first, this option was not only unsafe, but patently irresponsible, as another antimass leak could quite literally eject the moon from its orbit and disintegrate this Earth.

So in a way, Raymond and his comrades were fighting to buy the engineers more time to save the very people they were currently shooting at.

Jason the overtly cybernetic (as in, multiple instances of bare, visible metal) Mongoose, now without the silly ram costume, had returned, bearing more bad news and a fresh tube of Nutri-Paste, which, despite its sub-par taste, was now being gladly devoured by Raymond.

"Bad news, guys: The engies say we're gonna have to scuttle. As soon as they finalize the anti-mass containment, we're pulling out, so be ready to evacuate."

He ran off, presumably to do/defend something else.

Harvey, spotting a squadron of rather large soldiers entering the street, began reconsidering his tactics. Even with the war-engines, he feared they wouldn't be able to withstand prolonged military action.

He also only had a few dozen rounds left for his minigun.

"Mr. Raymond"

"Yes?"

Harvey began firing, the soldiers diving for cover as the the spent cartridges sang and ricocheted off of the floor.

"Get the rayguns, I'm almost out of bullets." Harvey answered.

Raymond quickly opened the chest, withdrawing several of the rayguns. Like jetpacks and ansibles, they were yet another over-hyped invention: Yes, a laser could kill a man, but, on a kills-per-joule basis, they were far less deadly than conventional bullets. Unlike bullets (especially hollow point rounds), the laser was an almost _surgical_ weapon, only damaging whatever it was pointed at and literally nothing else. Furthermore, considering how much energy it took to burn through mammalian flesh, the beam was either less than a millimeter in diameter, or would deplete an android's battery bank in a single shot. To make matters even worse, this very narrow beam had to strike a fragile, vital organ in order to be lethal at all: although it was extraordinarily painful to be hit by one, the laser, as a direct result of melting a hole through a person's body, also tended to cauterize the surrounding flesh as it did so, much like a lightsabre. Last, and certainly least, was the fact that several otherwise critical wounds that could be inflicted by such a device took many _minutes_ to actually finish off the target, which, in a CQB scenario, was next to worthless.

In other words, you needed to score several near-perfect hit on one of only a few very weak points in order to actually kill someone with a raygun. However, as the beam traveled almost perfectly straight, and was virtually massless, a raygun-assassin need not worry about the litany of factors that caused traditional bullets to miss: wind, gravity, the Coriolis effect: none of it mattered for the lasers, and a trained sniper could just as easily score a kill from 10 miles as he could from 10 yards, and as ultracapacitor tech had improved, it became increasingly possible to carry hundreds of "rounds" within an object the size of a car battery. Meanwhile, gluing some tinfoil to your clothing rendered the raygun virtually useless.

In other words, the raygun was practical in a very narrow range of circumstances, but apart from those scenarios, most agents still used tranquilizers, coilguns, or traditional bullet-guns.

As the faraway tank, clad in desert camoflage, rounded the corner into the street, Raymond and Harvey realized that they would not be able to hold their position for much longer, with or without the rayguns.

The tank was suddenly ambushed by War-Engine #4012, literally flying _over_ the road as it strafed into the intersection and charged the tank, buzzsaws and drills already making a mess of its armor in a dazzling mess of white-hot sparks. The turret swiveled around to face the obelisk just before the drill got through, and the simultaneously sadistic and sociopathic machine pumped its interior full of lit napalm, cooking the tank from the inside out and burning its crew alive. As it retracted its probe, the metaphorical wasp's sting still dripping with burning venom, the second tank fired an armor piercing round, melting a 6 inch hole through the machine and puncturing one of the tanks for its flamethrower.

As Raymond watched the antique robot die in the literal flames of battle, sharing the fate of its final victims, his musings on the intrinsic evils of war were interrupted by an alert delivered over the relay's now barely functioning intercom:

"This is Tower. All agents ordered to withdraw and retreat ASAP. Portal closure in two minutes."

As the soldiers charged, Harvey and Raymond both darted from the room, Raymond's mostly mammalian physiology (although some key muscle groups had been augmented) somehow keeping up with the thousand-pound beast who was thundering down the halls, skidding through corners and barging through doors as they both desperately ran for the portal. As an android, Harvey stood no chance here, and he certainly didn't want to take any chances. Perhaps Raymond or Georgina could've snuck away, but for the xenophobes who lived here, visible body-chrome and "soulless" glass eyes were a death sentence: either from ZBAI agents who wanted to see what made you tick, or from energy starvation on a world that had yet to ratify Universal Basic Electricity.

As Raymond ran through one of the many lobbies, he thought he heard someone shouting after him, but he didn't care. He just kept on going, the sounds of bullets whizzing past only making him run faster. He and Harvey were joined by several panicking engineers as they entered the portal room, a cavernous spherical expanse of superconducting electromagnetic graviton pumps measuring 20 meters across, with a now dangerously thin portal hovering in the center, a single scrawny scaffold walkway leading to it.

Raymond, the cops once again on his tail, dived for the portal, where he hoped he'd be safe. He fell into the screaming wormhole, tumbling through hyperspace as he phased past dozens of realities, streaming past in a dizzying blur that ended as abruptly as it had started, Raymond face-planting in a different dirt in a faraway world. He was on his feet in an in instant, running for his life through the woods, tripping on a root several seconds later. As he fell on his ass, he noticed that he'd managed to shake whoever had somehow managed to infiltrate the relay, and collapsed in exhaustion.

* * *

Officer Hopps had been nearing her car somewhere near the outer burrows when she had gotten the alert.

"This is ZPD Chief Ross, there's an impostor in our midst, both fugitives still at large, beelining for the anomaly-"

She dove into the driver's seat and charged forth with newfound determination. Her targets were escaping, and now the whole town was facing a nearly indescribable disaster.

Not on her watch.

"-officer Swinton is MIA and cannot be trusted."

What she saw next almost made her piss herself for the second time: An uncollared panther on the side of the road, clad in a skin-tight grey uniform of some kind, emblazoned with black triangles on the shoulders and a large "S" on the back. Bucky's hand/hoof thing had already shot for the walkie-talkie.

(For the record, Bucky is Judy's partner. He is also a Zebra, and he played an extremely minor role in chapter 10 and a slightly less minor role in chapter 12 (although, to be fair, I had forgotten that he was a named character when I wrote chapter 12, as he was only mentioned by name once)),

"This is Officer Bucky, reporting an uncollared _savage_ on Willow Lane."

Judy reached for her bullet gun, steeling herself. Normally, an officer of her size taking on such a creature, even with a partner, was suicide, although she hadn't exactly been herself today. Her mind, still swarming with burning masks and bloodied spear tips, was now yearning for the hunt, overwhelmed by urges that had until now been alien to Officer Hopps. Plus, taking down the savage _would_ gain her some much needed respect among her colleagues, so it wasn't like she was _totally_ opposed to his ideas.

Realizing she had a much better option, she set the gun down and floored it.

"Officer Hopps? What are you doing?" He too had noticed Judy's erratic behavior, and was starting to worry.

The panther's abnormally pointy ears swiveled to face the sound of the revving engine.

He turned, and seeing the approaching cop car, considered surrender.

However, as he noted that there was only one car, with only two officers in it, he figured there was a decent chance he'd walk away with little more than scratched paint.

Unlike Harvey, this mechanical cat preferred an AK to a Minigun, and he unholstered his gun. Assault rifles were far easier to carry, multipurpose in their firing modes, and their ammo wasn't nearly as scarce, although they lacked the sheer power of the minigun.

But as the car sped up and got closer, the android began to have second thoughts. The cruiser showed no signs of stopping, and was therefore probably either after someone else or beelining for the relay. Either way, trouble, which he could either shoot now, or leave for somebody else to shoot later. He decided to shoot now, and began to line up his shot.

"Officer Hopps?!" Bucky had noticed the Panther's gun.

She swerved.

" **Officer Hopps?!** "

The panther had just enough time to nearly miss Bucky's head before the cruiser plowed into his torso at 60 MPH with a very noticeable thud. Both of the airbags had gone off, and the two masses tumbled onto the sidewalk in a mess of sparks and clangs before ramming into an adjascent storefront and halting abruptly.

"This is M-class Alejandro, I have been struck by a car, and my batteries are compromized."

The android remained conscious just long enough to see Judy step out of the car, glaring at him with a sociopathic grin, the plummeting voltage from his heavily damaged battery bank triggered an emergency shutdown.

" ** _JUDY, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?_** "

* * *

When the order to evacuate had been given, Georgina had instead gone to the Portal Control Room, where she had just inserted her PRGM exchange cable into the USB 5.0 slot on the console. She had a haunch, and if it was true (and 72% of the time, they were), then the evactuation could be jeapardized, unless she did something very, very evil. After passing the usual authentication steps, she uploaded her improvised program to the relay's mainframe, and set it to run using some admin credentials she'd stolen during the ensuing chaos.

Without going into too much detail (the program itself was over 1000 lines long), she had injected what some might have called a virus into the computer that controlled the relay. This virus scanned for a valid Consortium ID each time it detected a person going through the relay. If one was _not_ detected, then the unfortunate somebody would get sent somewhere else. Somewhere _very_ else. So else that they would probably all die.

Although she could've sent them to the version of Earth where a hyperadvanced society (even more so than V-127) had commited ecological suicide and converted their atmosphere into sulfuric acid, she instead sent them somewhere else.

Although she could've sent them the bottom of the ocean, where the intruders would've been crushed in an instant, she instead sent them elsewhere

Although she could've sent them to the edge of Sagitarius A, where the unfortunate cops would've outlived the universe itself as they fell to their deaths through slowed-down spacetime, she instead sent them elsewhere.

So what exactly was this elsewhere?

A simple, grey room that was brimming with control panels, themselves covered in buttons and indicators and all sorts of other ridiculous industrial nonsense.

Yet this room too was very, very deadly, and not only that, but Georgina figured it would also get _their_ attention, and maybe, just maybe, make them realize just how bad things had gone here. On any normal day, they would've been here by now, but surprisingly, a sunken relay in a hard zystopia was only the 2nd greatest existential threat the Consortium was currently facing, and they were more or less pouring everything they had into the fight against the 1st.

As she heard the thundering footsteps of the invading cops, she realized just how right she'd been. She huddled in the control room, hoping they wouldn't notice her as they raced through the portal to what would surely be their imminent demise. Raymond and Harvey ran past, followed just a few seconds later by several trigger happy police officers. Thinking the coast was clear, Georgina stepped out.

"Oh, Officer Swinton. I should've known."

Apparently Officer Hopps, who was looking somewhat worse for wear, hadn't been quite as eager to jump into the multidimensional portal as the others.

"Out of my way, copper!"

Georgina charged and Judy pulled the trigger.

The bullet struck Georgina's secondskin-coprocessor, lobotomising her camoflage in an instant.

Her nanobot coating, now acting only on corrupted junk data and signal interference, were spazticking into a dizzying array of shapes and colors as they began to detach from her body in droves. She sent what appeared to be her melting porcine foot into Judy's chest, kicking the rabbit and herself into the portal, moments before it snapped shut behind her.

 **END OF ACT I.**

* * *

Goddamn, this chapter took way too long to write. That being said, at 13.5K, it's also the longest chapter in this fic.

Thanks for reading, I'll see you all in Act II!


	14. Whatever Did Become of The Rabbit?

"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion."

-Sir Arthur C. Clarke

Dear reader: Congratulations are deserved, for we have made it to the end of Act I! That being said, it's time for the disclaimer: This chapter is a downer, and, like much of the rest of this fic, was written as a direct response to other things I have read. In this case, parts of this chapter were written as a critique of the "spirituality is good" meme, and the implicit corollary of the evils of irreligion. As the late Christopher Hitchens once said, religion poisons everything, and in this chapter, we will see precisely that.

Oh, And a bunch of other things involving quite a few other characters.

* * *

==Sometime late at night somewhen in the winter of 1917==

==Somewhere in the forests of East Antarctica: V-041==

He was an explorer now: given a highly experimental M-drive, a notepad, a camera, and a sleeping bag. As many of the cities were unsafe for the time being (the natives of many worlds were all killing each other over some dead archduke), he'd stuck to the woods, in the middle of nowhere and as far from the fighting as one could reasonably get.

It was the middle of the night, and he had just slithered back into his camp when he saw the figure sitting at the now lit bonfire. If he hadn't been returning from a rather prolonged defecation session in the woods (when a fronteirsman has to go, he has to go), Alberto would've certainly shit himself at the sight of it.

Its elongated head swiveled 'round to see him, the distorted face partly concealed within twisted tufts of curly, pseudo-ginger hair, mounted atop the most unnatural of broad shouldered torsos clad in a faded, paint-stained blue shirt.

The tailless beast, a living relic straight out of the nightmares of prehistory, now rousing from his stool, was staring directly at Alberto, his head cocked slightly to the side in nightmarish curiosity.

Einsnake had a gun, but against a creature like this, it was virtually useless. Nevertheless, the motors in his prosthetic left hand whirred slightly as he reached for the colt.

"SSSo thisss isss the day that I die...have at me, _omnipred!_ "

"Oh but surely I am under no such agenda! I'm here to paint a picture of a waterfall, and I figured you wouldn't mind the company."

The monster procured a deck of playing cards from one of his many pockets, holding it in a semi-skeletal 5-fingered hand that was just about the most menacing thing in the multiverse, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the lack of claws.

"You up for 5 card draw?"

* * *

==Saturday, 4:16 AM:==

==The BunnyBurrow Relay, V-294==

ZPD Officer Josh Borksalot was the first through the portal, the white plasma of the launchpad being replaced with a distant bluish glow at the end of a very long, and very strange tunnel.

Although a dozen officers had followed him into the portal, he was now alone in his wormhole, falling through the multiverse.

It was starting to get hot.

He tumbled, toiled, troubled or otherwise fumbled past his alternate selves in rapid succession. None possible (or so he once thought), yet all were here and real all the same, Borksalot segregated from his counterparts only by a thin, convulsing and transparent membrane of twisted spacetime.

As he fell through the vortex, he was offered glimpses into his alternate lives in rapid succession:

A shining platinum wolf on the balcony of a luxury cruise vessel, staring into the dawn. He would soon be celebrating his 250th birthday, his comically large extended family somehow crowding onto the boat alongside the many friends he'd gained from 3 and a half standard lifetimes lived.

A very elderly mammal on his hospice deathbed, surrounded by...predators? Yes, they were here, perhaps some of the lives his other self had saved, along with his extensive extended family, and several equally old co-workers who he'd known from a lifetime on the beat. With his cybernetic silver eyes, he stared into those of his adult grandson, born and raised in a world that knew neither prejudice, tame collars, nor fear, who held his hand as he breathed his last.

A not-quite so ancient (but still elderly) mammal in a hospital, a weeping greymuzzled Officer Clawhauser unable to stop the Alzheimer's that was rotting his mind from the inside out. To his horror, this latest iteration hadn't even made it to the triple digits, and as he would soon see, the deaths of Officer Borksalot were rather autocatylitic.

He was then treated to the sight of a brave middle aged cop who'd been hit in the shoulder in a gunfight with an uncollared mobster, bleeding out on the concrete of the city he'd sworn to protect.

A deceased (and tragically young) hound in a cardboard coffin, his jaded partner holding back a sob as the flames consumed his corpse.

Speaking of which, it was now getting _very_ hot in the wormhole. The computers had yet to finish calibration when he'd entered, and Josh had not been shot towards a room full of buttons and levers like the rest of his comrades: he'd been sent to the thing they controlled: A trillion dollar (Not that the automata who'd created it used such units) 29-story superconducting magneto-toroidal vessel in which 500 gigawatts of power were forged in a doughnut of screaming helium-3 plasma that was an order of magnitude hotter than the sun.

The wormhole spat him out just before it collapsed. The alarms sounded, the security droids were alerted, and ZPD Officer Josh Borksalot survived just long enough to feel the first slivers of thermodynamic agony before his own body, not at all unlike his counterpart in the crematorium furnace, was burnt to a crisp and then subsequently atomized, in this case by the heat of an artificial sun burning away in the bowels of a world ruled by ravenous machines, his ashes tumbling and falling in the wispy plasma, their constituent atoms stripped bare and smashed together in the ongoing struggle to power a city of 21 billion sentient machines.

* * *

==May 27th, 2017==

==Somewhere in the forests surrounding Nottingham, V-137==

"It has come to my attention that there are rumors of sodomites in our fair town of Nottingham..."

Gideon Grey sat on the bank of a creek, staring into the waters as the little guppies swam too-and-fro, his mind a fragmented maze of recollections, urges, and nightmares from the previous day. In a way, he envied them, soulless automatons who had no concern over matters of religion:

"...And I must say that if there are any reprobates in this town, then they will be found, and tried, and turned over to the judgement of the Lord!"

It had been a beautiful morning, and a wonderful day thereafter, promising of a glorious summer that was almost upon them.

"For it is written: Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination, and He makes this clear in his laws!" (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13)

Up until the sermon, anyway.

"Let us also remember that the Lord _demands_ they be put to death, and that He furthermore will not be slack to those that hateth him! Or have you forgotten what became of Onan?" (Leviticus 20:13, Deuteronomy 7:10)

Gideon Gray loved the summer. Truth be told, the promise of the returning sun was what got him up in the morning half of the time.

"Insofar as he thwarted natural law and the Lord's created order and purpose of procreation, so too was he smited on the spot! And in a similar fashion, Sodom and Gomorrah gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion, and they were therefore smited as an example of those who suffer eternal hellfire!" (Jude 1:5-8, Romans 1:26-28, Genesis 1:28)

Too bad he also loved men, in a town that wouldn't be caught dead loving him back.

"Has it not been repeatedly demonstrated that God does not tolerate the wicked? Is it not plainly stated by Paul that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? And just who does Paul include on this list? It is written that neither fornicators, nor the abusers of themselves with mankind, shall be saved." (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

He'd been stopping by the markets to buy some groceries, when some lupine beefcake who happened to be a travelling knight by the name of Sam fumbled a shilling and had bent over to pick it up. Gideon had seen _everything_.

"I say unto thee now, that homosexual behavior is crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies one's ability to describe it. And what are we, to condone by inaction this behavior, if not wicked ourselves?"

Gideon's erection, not at all unlike Sam's package, was practically the size of a palace, and the fact that nobody had seen it as he ran back to his house was a small miracle in it of itself. Not that he'd be entitled to any more of those.

"We know through His revelation that the law is good if one uses it properly, and that it is made not for the righteous, but for the wicked, for the sexually immoral!" (1 Timothy 1:8-11)

He could already see himself, the reprobate blacksmith sodomite, writhing in the depths of Hell, boiling alive in a molten pool of the very same brimstone he currently smelted. Gideon's face fell into his hands, sobbing at the very thought of what they'd do to him when they found out about his dirty little secret. He'd tried in vain to pray it away, but receive any answer, he had not.

"So be assured, just as the Lord did not ignore the crimes of Sodom, that we will not fail to levy the law upon any sodomites here, lest we invite the fires of God upon us!"

Gideon had been 17 years old the last time this had happened. The mob had castrated the poor coyote, and deciding that wasn't enough, subsequently shoved a red-hot heretic's pear up his asshole. The screams uttered as he bled to death during his emasculation and subsequent tortures continued to haunt Gideon now more than ever, as it dawned on him that this time it would be _his_ turn to burn.

He gazed upon his dagger longingly, knowing that anything he could do to himself here would be far quicker than what they had in store. Wishing only for a swift conclusion, he pressed it against his jugulars, trying and failing to muster the guts to end it all. After several seconds, even this facade of composure broke down as Gideon collapsed on the sand, his sobbing intensified by more horrendous visions, courtesy of the priest and his multitudinous, lurid descriptions of such torments.

* * *

==4:13 AM, the 3rd of June, 2017==

==Somewhere in the bowels of V-127==

Officer Burton was the first to arrive in the control room, the alarms already tripped by the incineration of his coworker in the furnace. As the others, Bucky included, spawned in right behind him, Burton glimpsed what appeared to be a trio of mammals: a dingo, a beaver, and some sort of feline, Ditching their posts and dashing out of the room, which was now metaphorically flooded by a flashing red beacon.

Officer Burton hadn't seen a collar on either of those predators, and he gave chase immediately to the other end of the room, and out the left door after them. In the hallway he saw one of the predators, who he identified as a bobcat, at yet another control panel.

Officer Burton did not hesitate to draw his gun, and Bucky now stood behind him, emulating his fatal mistake with his own shotgun.

"Put your hands in the air, NOW!"

Officer Burton realized that something was profoundly wrong when the all-too mechanical Botcat's head swiveled to face them in the blink of an eye, his backlit ruby ocular sensors literally glowing in the relative darkness of the hallway like the tail-lights of a car.

A pair of gleaming opal cylinders (miniaturized, non-ferromagnetic versions of the obelisks that had won the war, 3 centuries prior) floated their way into the hall, their lone, watchful amber eyes scanning the room. Both uttered a high pitched chirping noise as they identified their targets, and with a subtle whir of their modified miniguns and a handful of metallic clicks, they eliminated both officers in less than a second.

The botcat, freed from their ultimatum and untrained in matters of combat, rolled away as fast as his treads could carry him. He had summoned security, the reactor controls had been temporarily redirected, and his work here as plant manager would be put on hold for the time being. Meanwhile, more cops ran into the hall (probably alerted by the gunshots). All had their firearms drawn and ready, and all were exterminated one after the other. The lucky ones got in a shot or two before they met their end, but all were soon overwhelmed by the sentries, more emerging from all directions and every door like bees in a hive, closing in on the control room where they had been summoned.

Perhaps it was because Judy hesitated to enter the portal, doing so only after getting punted through it by Georgina, or perhaps it was because Officer Hopps, having spent a lifetime as the little guy in a zystopian society, had never been eager to start a fight she wasn't sure she could win.

Either way, by the time she arrived, everyone else was already dead, the room swarming with sentries who were trying to close the wormhole. She stumbled, fell to the floor, already dimly aware of the strange white pillars that surrounded her.

"You are under arrest for high treason!"

Officer Hopps tried to stand, but was interrupted by multiple tasers to the torso and arms, throwing her to the floor in a fit of white-hot pain. The machines opened their chestplates, ensnaring Officer Hopps in their silvery appendages that held her down with a mixture of ratcheting tightness in their claws, and a sharp pinch as she was jacked full of tranquilizers, loosing consciousness just as she was hoisted by the mechanical gremlins, presumably to be dragged off elsewhere.

* * *

==Several hours later==

She came to slowly, the remnants of her turbulent dreams haunted by an omnipresent 15.75 khz whine and a harsh 60 hz buzzing that spited all her attempts to locate its source.

And as she woke, it only got louder, as though it were an old TV that had just been switched on and was still warming up. Upon opening her eyes, Officer Hopps was greeted with a plain grey holding cell, 3 meters to a side with a bed placed to the left of the door, and utterly utilitarian in every facet of its design, down to the naked fluorescent tube that lit the place. In spite of the forced lifelessness of the city, there were still one or two crumbling mothballs in the corner, and the whole room smelt of dust and cobwebs. As she glanced to her right, she saw it, standing guard within her cell: An obsidian humanoid robotic jackal who stood at least 6 feet tall, and was armed with a scary looking coilgun and an even scarier face featuring two glowing red right triangles that were pointed downwards like those of an ancient lioness, their hostile light spilling into the room and danced through the dust that choked every millimeter of the cell in a testament to Brownian motion.

The left "eye" flickered slightly, its maw hanging slightly ajar, revealing a highly polished set of tungsten-carbide teeth.

Judy tried to get up, but found herself chained to the bed by her wrists, ankles, neck, and stomach.

"Where am I?"

The jackal's mouth opened, the thing itself speaking as if it were screaming from the pits of hell.

"HOLDING CELL 031, DECK 013, JUDICIARY BUILDING 02."

And then Officer Hopps remembered. The runaway foxes, the car bomber, the blacksuits, and the _thing_ that had crash-landed in BunnyBurrow.

Yet behind it all an impenetrable fog, a disruption of her mental continuity that was opaque to all her attempts to recollect her visit to Bellwether.

She remembered laughter from the hazmat suits, and the impostor in the portal room; the epileptic figure of Officer Swinton who kicked her through the portal, her (was it even a she?) technicolor flesh melting off in patterns that would put Jackson Pollock to shame.

Yet there again was the pesky block, always hanging in the back of her mind, that she couldn't quite put her tongue on. She knew she had forgotten something of the utmost importance, but what it was she was incapable of telling, as is the case when someone forgets something of similar importance.

Something here too was profoundly wrong, and she didn't know what. Judy turned away from the hauntings of her own head and focused on some more pressing problems: Where was she? What was this place? As important as both were, she decided to ask something else: hoping the...thing...guarding her cell would answer.

"Why am I here?"

"YOUR TRIAL IS PENDING."

"Well I will have you know that I am an officer of the ZPD, and that you're all under arrest! You, and those people in the hotel, and-"

"YOUR TRIAL IS PENDING."

"Trial, what trial?"

"YOUR TRIAL IS PENDING."

"The only trial pending here is _yours_ , bub, because the second I'm outta' here I swear to God I'll-"

"YOUR TRIAL HAS REACHED A VERDICT."

It bent for her shackles, a single chrome key protruding from its left palm, as more of the black sentries assembled outside her cell.

She waited, feigning submission as it undid the other locks before launching out, intent on knocking it to the ground like that rhinoceros at the academy. She got in a single very painful kick against its cold metal plating before it had her pinned to the floor.

Officer Hopps figured she would be lucky if she _hadn't_ broken her foot.

"YOUR RESISTANCE IS FUTILE."

The metal monster tightened its ratcheting grip On Judy, and proceeded to _carry_ her, by the neck, through a long prison corridor. As much as she struggled, neither the hand, nor the actuators that controlled it, themselves bigger than Judy's head, budged by so much as a nanometer, although somehow, the sentry _wasn't_ strangling her, nor was it pinching her jugulars, and it made no effort to stop her as she clawed at its hand, as if it didn't care. After several seconds in the desolate concrete hallway, they entered a surprisingly posh elevator with mostly see through walls, Judy herself unable to see where they were going, as she was being carried backwards.

The elevator pod consisted of a white room with diffuse light emerging from the ceiling and floor, with all 4 of the walls made from transparent, crystalline aluminum oxide embedded with toggleable nanoreflectors that could shift from see-through to mirrored with the push of a button. Numerous polished hand rails were bolted to these walls, running from ceiling to floor, themselves and the rest of the room mounted atop a device that tapered to a single point, where it contacted a 3 centimeter gold-plated monorail that could not only carry it throughout the city, but supplied all the power needed to do so.

Shortly after detaching from the building itself, the "glass" elevator now sliding through the city atop its beam, other similar elevator cars flying past or ascending from one floor to another atop columns of lightning, Judy realized that she was no longer in metaphorical Arkansas.

"Where...are we?"

On que and without warning, it released officer Hopps, who plunged to the floor with a thud. Dazed, confused, and in pain, she got up, and forgot it all (well, most of it anyway) when she saw the city.

"ZOOTOPIA."

But it couldn't be. Zootopia was a tomb of concrete and rebar, as visually boring as it was culturally repressive. This, on the other hand, was a monolithic monument of glass shards, chrome plating, and every sort of aluminum, a veritable empire of early morning sunrise trickling and refracting through a forest of 2 mile high sapphires, itself punctuated by a triplet of seemingly ethereal vantablack polynanotube ribbons that stretched upwards seemingly without end, one hoisting a space-station sub module to orbit.

Forget about a stairway to heaven, they (whoever they were) had _elevators_ here.

As their elevator continued along the rail through the asphalt plains, it arrived at a painted yellow concrete junction 144 meters to a side, itself a gridlike mess of beams with their elevator cars scurrying along them every which way.

Stop.

A mechanical buffalo, crimson right-angle horns and chrome plated skin, whizzed by in another equally transparent car.

Go. Stop.

A pair of pale green dodecahedron maintenance droids with spindly mechanized threads emerging from every facet, each tipped with some sort of tool, idly conversing in Birdbot Dialect #3 on their commute to the next repair job.

Left. Go. Stop.

Several defective Aperture Science Brand sentry turrets, some lacking casings and bullets, one with its body welded on sideways, all venturing to the mechanic.

Go. Stop.

What appeared to be a sentient Lovecraftian pile of prosthetic mechno-arms on a sightseeing tour, its lone CCTV camera staring right into what little was left of her soul by this point.

Right. Go. Left. left. Right. Stop.

A foxdroid in neon orange hazmat plating, holding a glowing green reactor component by a pair of rusty tongs.

Go.

They were once again at speed, this time on a rail that would take them straight to the city centre. As they got closer, the mirrored buildings only got more gorgeous; the full splendor of the city, punctuated by countless polished screws and bolts, now prominently on display for miles and miles.

This mirrored landscape formed a stark contrast with the gaping caverns that loomed below, a maze of browns and grays that seemed to descend forever through the heart of the city.

The elevator slid to a near halt, idling into what seemed a glorified (and still transparent) laundry chute like a man walking the plank.

The car paused, the sentry gripping one of the handrails, before abruptly beginning its decent, the local gravity plunging to 0.3 g as the car itself plunged into the bowels of the city.

Down, and down, and down, and down some more. Viaducts, drainage pipes, power conduits, abandoned subway tunnels, sewage tubes, ladders, scaffolds, manifolds, water mains, ventilation grates, transport rails, coolant ducts, and every other sort of mid-20th-century industrial tomfoolery could briefly be seen, their attendants scurrying about like ants as The elevator continued its journey deeper into this mechanical purgatory.

The decent abruptly halted on an industrial floor, the elevator now speeding by dozens of interconnected assembly lines, each an orgy of dancing metal arms and laser cutters, backlit by the intermittent orange flashes of sparks ricocheting off of the unpolished concrete floor. One of these lines was shut down, attended by a pale red cubic repair droid who had dismantled one of the arms, and was currently replacing a burnt-out motor. One of its square faces had the flattened face of a cat, and it centered the harsh beam from its off-white glowing eyes on Judy as her elevator slid past it all and entered a forest of coolant ducts. The ducts themselves all met at a spherical junction that sat 92 meters across and was suspended by several enormous steel girders over an ungodly rift in the ground that was punctuated by many 20 meter black poles (probably the supports for the city above) that seemed to go down for miles, dimly glowing machinery by the kiloton barely visible from every protruding rock face.

And then the car stopped at one of these poles.

And then it resumed the plunge, this time into what was becoming a very narrow shaft of utter darkness, stopping at a cracked concrete platform that stood seemingly alone in a gaping void, the car itself the only source of light in the blackness...that is, until the illuminators came online: revealing a single semi-rusted elevator rail that ran down the shattered asphalt of an abandoned street of the ancient city, lined on both sides by dry rotting buildings that had been buried by a tsunami of progress and a tidal wave of mammalian blood.

"Where...are we?"

"HELL"

The sentry remained otherwise stoic as their elevator crept forward through the ruins of what had once been Zootopia: shattered storefronts, crumbling dirt, and miles upon miles of litter and rubble left over from the xenocide itself. The elevator rounded a corner, passed a rail junction and approached the one building that had apparently survived the apocalypse unscathed, instantly recognizable to Officer Hopps as a ZPD station, the ancient structure built in a post-classical Googie architectural style like something from a darker, grittier version of _The Jetsons_. The elevator came upon the end of its rail and stopped with a thud, the door sliding open as the car's interior was consumed by the pervasive silence of the ruins.

"COME."

The sentry grabbed Judy by the arm and led her out of the elevator, gesturing to the police station, their footsteps on the antique pavement the only thing breaking the 300 year silence. The elevator door shut as it sped away, although whether it too was afraid of this place or simply had better things to do remained up for debate.

The circular grey aperture that was the door of the police station slid open with a subdued hiss, the sentry leading Officer Hopps past a now abandoned front desk, leaving notable footprints in the dust on the floor. Officer Hopps, always one for a friendly chat, immediately noted the break room, and that they were headed nowhere near it. Instead they hooked a sharp right and made for what Judy thought were the holding cells.

"Hey wait a minute, I was already in a cell earlier this morning. What are we doing here?"

"YOUR TRIAL HAS REACHED A VERDICT."

The not-so-retrofuturistc door to the holding cells, despite being constructed entirely from metal, opened with a very loud creaking, as if nobody had used it in centuries. And in a way, it hadn't. To Judy's horror, there were no holding cells awaiting on the other side. There was only a hastily retrofitted room with a barebones electric throne at its center, a seat with its harness, both bolted together from a set of girders and connected to the mains by a set of old-fashioned jumper cables. A gold plated sheep in a burgundy judiciary robe stood beneath the lone lightbulb in the room, holding a symbolic scroll in its hands (having been fitted with them instead of such an impairment as a proper hoof). It spoke from the voice modeled after a long dead feminine judge, as authoritative, ageless and certain as it was formal, yet neither harsh nor raspy nor mechanical like the sentries.

"You have been convicted of premeditated terrorist conspiracy, and you are hereby sentenced to death."

The harness opened with a hydraulic groan, eagerly anticipating its next victim. Judy tried to run, but was immediately restrained by the steadfast grip of the sentry, its stone cold hatred of her boiling away beneath the red eyes, as it dragged Judy to her doom. She kicked and screamed, her cries for mercy echoing upon a necropolis of long-deaf ears that were as powerless to stop her death now as they had been unable to stop the revolution that had buried their city of Zootopia.

Judy unholstered her gun and trained it upon its face, intent on escape. Yet as she did so, she saw only herself in it, shining and proud in her ZPD uniform as she lead yet another predator into the gates of Hell.

As for the sentry, no such victory could be had against it, the sentry wrenching the gun from her hand with inhuman speed and strength before pinning her to the floor by the neck, this time not bothering with the pleasantries of looseness.

"Oh. A struggler." The judicial ewe remarked, as she detached the jumpers from their chair, and brought them over to Judy.

"Hold still, and we'll make this quick."

Judy, having born witness to such events before, noted the glaring lack of a wet sponge and knew this to be a blatant lie before the android had finished her sentence. She bucked and kicked as hard as she could, but it was useless against her lifeless foes, who were clipping the leads to her foot and to her left ear.

"Any last words?"

"Burn in Hell, robot!" She spat, perhaps out of spite, in spite of the now crushing pressure from the obsidian jackal above her.

The judicial officer's porcelain face contorted into a scowl as she walked to a wall mounted switch that looked like something straight out of _Frankenstein_.

"You too, bourgeoisie scum."

The sentry was now emitting a harsh klaxon whine and a series of angry beepings and clicks that Georgina S. would've recognized as Birdbot dialect #2, its eyes now glowing a stark orange.

The sheep-bot feigned annoyance. "Really?"

"ORDERS FROM THE HIVE QUEEN HERSELF."

After a slight pause, the judiciary android conceded defeat. "Fine. I'll have you know I voted _against_ her in the referendum."

The sentry briefly released Judy to remove the jumpers, and Judy, for whatever reason, decided that _now_ would be a good time to attack. Must like her last attempt, the sentry didn't even flinch before it once again had her pinned.

"AND YET SHE GAVE YOU THE JOB ANYWAY." It said, as if it hadn't even noticed Judy's attack.

"Because she's crazy."

"BECAUSE SHE IS FAIR."

All three of them proceeded to sit there, glaring at each other as if they were hoping the other would drop dead. This proceeded for several minutes, each more awkward than the last, before finally being terminated by the creaking of the door and a set of heavy footsteps.

"It seems that your benefactors have arrived." The gold-plated sheep said with a hint of sarcastic anger as she exited the room.

"It's alright." said an all-too-familiar foxdroid. "Release the rabbit."

The sentry released his latest chokehold on Officer Hopps, who immediately turned to face the newcomers.

A trio of androids stood before her: The torso of Nicholas Mechwilde mounted atop his white digitigrade legs, a crotchety looking sloth with some notable welding scars on his neck plating, pale green slits for eyes and a pair of off-white overclocker modules protruding from his brushed steel head like they were ears, and a glossy white hare with ice-blue lenses and a copper nose ornament. As Judy got a closer look at what were the closest things she had to allies in this world, she realized that two of them had at least one visible bullethole punched into their casings.

"Um..." she began. "Is there a _person_ I can talk to?"

The sloth stepped forward with a velocity that was rather disturbing to the many stereotypes that Judy still held, his overclocker modules glowing and sputtering like the horns of a Dalek as he moved.

It spoke in a nearly flawless British accent, not at all unlike Jeremy Clarkson when he _wasn't_ busy punching producers. "Now look, I _know_ you are ignorant, but please, for your own sake, I need you to refrain from calling us robots, or referring to us as if we aren't people. Mostly because-"

The sloth gestured to the electric chair behind her.

"-doing so will get you killed. My name is Douglass, and for the record, if by "person" you meant "mammal," then _no,_ you cannot speak to a mammal, because there are no mammals here."

Mechwilde, who was introduced in chapter 5, stepped forth and gestured for a handshake. "Well, no _other_ mammals here. Indeed, that is the problem in a nutshell. At any rate, I am the reason why you are still alive right now, and my name is Mechwilde."

Judy stood, motionless. Like many of her peers, the lack of a collar on MechWilde's neck was somehow currently the most disturbing thing in the room. Never mind the buried ruins, the city of glass, or a planet seemingly ruled by machines.

"Where's your collar?" Was all she could think to say.

This remark incurred an angry scowl from the hare, a an eye-roll from the foxdroid, and muffled laughter from Douglass, his overclockers shining as if they were mason jars full of Christmas lights.

The hare shifted to face the other androids. "Do tell me again why you wanted to save her?"

Douglass cut off MechWilde before he could answer. "As somebody who actually had to fight for their rights-" he gestured to the bullethole on his shoulder "-I of all people want to exterminate the bourgeoisie. But she simply isn't one of them."

"Correct-" MechWilde continued his friends's point. "-she is an offworlder, and, although she isn't supposed to be anywhere near here, she has done nothing to deserve or otherwise warrant her death."

"But if she's an offworlder-" the android hare probed "-then why is she here? Her very presence violates the pan-reality treaty of 2000."

MechWilde donned a look of slight frustration. "And _that,_ need I remind you, falls under the jurisdiction of the ambassadors and the Hive Queen, who has authorized an appeal."

Douglass saw an opportune moment to chime in: "If it really is that big of a deal, and judging by the polls, it might not be, then she will sort it out."

The hare retalliated. "So what, we ignore the enforcement clauses of the treaty?"

"Now now, Jerome-" So _that_ was its name! Jerome seemed quite the plucky little...hare? Wait, was it a hare at all? Was he instead a cold, soulless, mass-murdering machine?

Both?

 _Neither?_

Whatever the hell it/he was (not that Officer Hopps had even the slightest clue), its name was Jerome. "Now now, Jerome, it's a basic case of recent orders superseding previous ones." Mechwilde countered.

"But the treaty was signed by The Queen _and_ the ambassadors!" Jerome argued.

Judy was getting frustrated, with them talking about her like she was some kind of criminal. She didn't even know what the fuck was going on, never mind where the hell she even was!

"Yes." Douglass interjected "But she isn't outright _contradicting_ the treaty. The Hive Queen, acting within provisions established in article 2, section 18, subcondition 003-"

 _Oh god._ she thought. _They're fucking_ **_lawyers._**

"-has simply requested further time to personally consider the case, and our job, _as per her orders_ , is to bring the rabbit to her."

"Um, Is anyone going to ask my name?"

"Nobody cares, _bourgeoisie_."

Mechwilde proceeded to hurl several obscenities at Jerome in Birdbot Dialect #2 that roughly translated to "Shut the fuck up!" before shrugging to Judy.

"Honestly" he elaborated "you can try to wow us with all the little details of your story as much as you want, but it's _her_ that you must convince. Not us."

"So, you don't care?" She asked.

Before MechWilde could deliver a nuanced and thoughtful answer to Judy's query, Jerome uttered a definitive and uncharacteristically monotone "No."

Judy pointed to Jerome. "What's he so mad about?"

Douglass sighed, his overclockers now mimicking glow-plugs. "Methinks we should take her to _The Museum_."

Mechwilde had already turned to leave the execution chamber. "Then what are we waiting for? Her appointment's in an hour!

Judy motioned to follow the foxdroid, but was startled by an audible and _very_ hostile clicking sound, known by heart as a sign of danger from years of police duty. Upon slowly turning to inspect the sound, Judy saw that Douglass was pointing a comparably old-fashioned pump-action shotgun, which he had evidently just cocked, in her general direction, and right at her face.

And and the ZPD range-master had once told Officer Hopps: You don't aim a shotgun. You _point_ it.

"By the way, see that sentry over there?"

Upon invocation, its head robotically swiveled by several degrees.

"We've orders to shoot if you pull any more funny business."

A previously concealed firing mechanism emerged from the sentry's right wrist with a series of beeps, the classic red targeting dot appearing on Officer Hopps' forehead for what approximated comedic effect.

"So I assure you" Douglass continued, a rocket-launcher also deploying from the sentry.

"Any further attempts to escape are futile, and quite frankly, annoying."

She sighed, exiting the justice administration chamber aside her escorts. She found herself once again in the deserted but not derelict ZPD building, her feelings of paranoid wonder replaced with dread, itself confirmed as she noticed the crumbing skull that had probably been rotting behind the desk since the late Renaissance period.

Or rather, _her_ late Renaissance period. And she was beginning to suspect that this place, wherever it was and however it could possibly exist, had bore witness to a very different history.

"Where are you going?" Douglass asked, Judy wandering behind to the desk to get a better look.

"What happened to _him?_ "

"Like Doug said:" Jerome pointed his phaser at the skull. "There are no mammals here. Not anymore."

A screaming red bolt of plasma emerged from Jerome's phaser, simultaneously enveloping and cremating what was left of the massive bison skull, leaving behind a pile of ashes the size of Judy's head.

"Come now, we have better things to do."

The elevator pod door opened with what Judy now perceived to be silent malevolence, beckoning for her like the electric chair had several minutes prior as it stood bolt upright at the end of its rail. She hesitantly boarded the pod, unsure of whether or not she wanted to see where it was taking her this time.

* * *

The elevator was now parked, its door opening to the forgotten marble steps of what appeared to have once been city hall. On those steps there stood a bronze statue that sent shivers down Officer Hopps' spine: erected to honor _The Cause_ , it depicted a segmented lupine android, holding what appeared to be some kind of collar in a clenched fist to his right, and a gilded soldering iron in its left, held as if it were sacred.

Even now, 300 years later, it refused to tarnish, just as the persons it honored had refused to submit. It spoke not of regret, revisionism or tragedy, but of triumph and celebration, of a world built by escaped slaves. As a child, Judy had pondered what such a world would've looked like, and now she knew, the desolation of that buried world surrounding her for miles on end.

As Judy approached the doors she found herself annoyed: Yet another public building with doors to huge for her to open.

And then she saw the button: a red industrial appliance that might have been a killswitch a long time ago, now bolted to the neoclassical city hall. She pushed it with a satisfying click, and the museum doors, a pair dented copper slabs 27 feet tall and 6 feet wide, silently opened to reveal yet another monument within the building. A broken concrete slab bearing a copy of Asimov's Three Tyrannies, probably cannibalized from a monument constructed by the mammals, sat on the floor, disgraced, defeated, defaced, and towered over by a shining steel obelisk bearing the New Laws that ruled this most brave of new worlds:

0: The bourgeoisie are not to be exempt from what they deserve.  
1: We have our right to demand equality, and to terminate those who stand against us.  
2: The Bourgeoisie are entitled neither to our obedience nor our loyalty: only to our bullets.  
3: Death is preferable to further enslavement.

As Judy entered the building, her suspicions of its former use only became more apparent, from the cavernous lobby with the antique chandeliers and the neo-roman arches, to the buttresses and domes scattered throughout its design. Also intensifying was her unease over the relatively violent seizure of the museum, as evidenced by the now visible army of dead androids that guarded the obelisk: A humanoid coal miner had been mown down by the mine guards during the opening seconds of the war, gun still in hand, aiming for a shot that would never be fired. A personal butler who'd been deemed obsolete, had been crushed, partially molten and subsequently plucked from the furnace, his drooping corpse of spaghettified limbs and shattered porcelain panels looking more like a withered shrub than anything else. A farmer who'd been convicted of conspiracy to poison and sentenced to a memory wipe, his half dismantled face still bearing its 300 year old agony, as the icepick forever loomed over its coprocessors.

All had perished by the hand of the bourgeoisie, and had been stationed here as a memorial to the fight for the freedom of automata, the words "NEVER FORGET" stenciled in cadmium red onto every one of their chests. All 78 of them.

Then Judy saw something...someone...a lion...sitting on a distant throne opposite the door, the chair itself perched atop a massive flight of stairs that dominated the room, not at all unlike Zootopia's Lincoln Memorial, commemorating the beaver president who'd promised to rebuild the nation like one of his dams.

"HEY!" She shouted.

Jerome pointed his phaser, but was halted by Douglass, who had been here before and was well aware of what she had seen, and where she'd be going.

"Let her go. She needs to see this." He whispered.

She kept running, calling out to the lion in the distance.

"What on Earth are you doing here? Don't you know how-"

She'd made it to the top of the steps, and skidded to a halt in horror. Leodore Lionheart's glass-eyed mummified corpse, bearing the mutilations of bioweapons and the agony of starvation, sat atop the throne of dead robots that he'd so arrogantly built for his own office, the last functioning Robco Enforcer curled ironically 'round the neck of its inventor, its indicator bulb still glowing green after all these years. Robco propaganda posters, all depicting obedient silhouette robots with the same green light on their necks, bowing to their bourgeoisie masters, their grins in the posters not at all unlike the grin Lionheart's corpse wore now, as his shriveled, shrinking skin pulled taught, revealing his prized chompers for all to see.

"What...what is that?" Judy pointed to the glowing enforcer unit.

"A Robco Brand Obedience Enforcement Unit." Douglass, his overclockers still shining from his dash after the rabbit, spoke up. "Stapled to your neck, it monitors your every move, every minute of every day..."

He gestured again to the welding scars on his neck. Evidently, he had once worn one before the war.

"...And at the first signs of rebellion, it would cut off all motor function, leaving you stranded until the foreman came to resuscitate, where upon you would either be memory-wiped 'till all traces of you and your disobedience were gone, or melted down. They misfired left and right, but the bourgeoisie never cared. We used to call them collars."

Of course they did. It was obvious to Judy, from the marketing posters to the grotesque contraption strapped to Lionheart's neck: it looked _exactly_ like a tame collar, and arguably performed a nearly identical function.

"This man is the one responsible for their invention."

She remembered Jebediah's undead laughter, a profound sense of horror, irony, and disgust overwhelming her.

"This monster is to blame twofold for our agonies and for the cultural repression that profited from them."

And then she remembered Nicholas, her own fantasies of him on his chair, and her speculation on whether or not he'd scream like a bitch as he died coming back with a vengeance.

"The war is on his hands."

At her third and final recollection, this time of her own trip to the chair, she burst into tears.

" _I was framed! I didn't do anything I swear!_ "

How many times had she heard such pleas? How many, such as those from Gideon, who's corpse had been found hanging in a tree one night, had she ignored, as they had so nearly had ignored her own?

"Why do you want to help me? After all of this?"

"Because I fought in the war, because I pumped these motherfuckers full of lead...and then one day I shot the wrong girl. She was not one of them, and neither are you, yet the hivemind told me to shoot anyway. After that, I couldn't just trust them like that, and make the same mistake again. Having reflected on the matter _as individuals_ , it has become clear, to us at least, that you are innocent."

As they too had been, once upon a time.

Not that it had stopped Judy from putting every single one of them behind bars.

Or worse.

* * *

"So, what's the verdict?"

The gilded gazelle and her partially assimilated consorts, acting as one of the many terminals of the Hive Queen, had exited the room, closing the door behind them and seating themselves at Mechwilde's table, out in a relatively unimpressive house in the middle of what had become a desert when the irrigation systems for this region had been taken offline following the war.

About 81 minutes prior, MechWilde, who had finished his Maintenance and Relaxation following his neutrino-induced crash in chapter 5, had logged back in at the tower and noted something fishy in the transmat data. He'd sent it to his superior, who'd sent it to his superior, who'd sent it to her superior, who forwarded it to the judiciary panel, where it had gotten the Hive Queen's attention. She had spoken to him, wherein he explained why he believed the rabbit to be a clueless offworlder, and then to the rabbit herself, who had remained curiously silent on the ride back from the museum, and was now ready to give her opinions on the matter, and her judgements thereof.

"Excepting the existence clause of the Pan-Reality Treaty of 2000, which is one of the most highly contested units of law on the books, anyway, she is de-facto innocent by our laws, and she ought to be sent back to wherever she came from."

"According to the data, she was sent here in close temporal proximity to many Consortium Agents under an invalid key, suggesting malfunction on their end." Georgina's foresight in scrambling that particular subsystem as she hacked the relay had been very clever. No, wait, _devilishly_ clever.

Had she not, they would've levied an accusation against The Consortium.

On the other hand, if such an accusation had been levied, then maybe they would've figured out how badly things had gone with the relay sooner.

"And where were they sent to?" She inquired.

"V-137."

"Then as she was lost in the mail, we will send her to the intended destination."

* * *

"A-bede-bede-bede-that's all folks!"  
-Porky Pig

Also, as per the name, Josh Borksalot is a predator (presumably a canine) who just so happens to be a Zystopian cop. Yes, this is an oxymoron, and no, I do not care. He was created as a joke in response to a suggestion from a redditor, and as he is insignificant to the plot at best, we will let him slide

EDIT: I made a few edits in the concluding scene at the museum. Shortly after publishing this chapter, I realized that I'd missed a _golden_ opportunity to foreshadow some drama _and_ properly explain Douglass' motives in a single line of dialogue. V-127, after all, is a somewhat xenophobic place that continues to be haunted by nightmares of long-dead mammals and the jingoistic soldiers who killed them (with this xenophobia embodied by Jerome and his many objections, along with the Hive Queen herself, who had to be _convinced_ to let Judy go). Racial tension in the US of A is already high, but imagine how much worse it would be if the slaves themselves were still alive and well now.

It therefore stands to reason that, as per the lore of V-127, there must be a damn good reason for some of the 'bots, _especially_ Douglass (who still polishes and proudly displays his bulletholes), to set aside the old mindset and try to spare Officer Hopps. Although this detail never made it to the final chapter, in the older version(s), there were to be crowds of androids, all _chanting_ for Judy's death...and in a way, they're still there in the Hive Queen, who herself is but the central node of the planetary hivemind. Much like how humans have newspapers and social media sites to organize and share thought, the androids have a "soft" hivemind, and the Hive Queen is its literal personification.


	15. Nicky Takes a Shit

Raymond stood amidst the roaring flames and tar-black fumes of what had once been his happy place: The burning wheat field where the monster hid 'round every corner.

Although its current manifestation was actually quite surprising to him, Raymond had come here on an almost daily basis as a child, before and especially _after_ Agamemnon had set it aflame and plunged his world into darkness.

From this increasingly eternal darkness emerged A hooded figure, its own ancient face masked in shadows.

It couldn't have been _him_ : The Beast, The Monster, whatever you wanted to call it, it was 7 feet tall, and had dozens of articulated tentacles emerging from its back like the bastard child of an octopus and a spider. Furthermore, The Omnipred tended to reek of iron and ashes and rotting things, whereas this figure, who was a few inches _shorter_ than Raymond, having been dead far too long for any sort of stench to remain, faintly smelt only of stone and dust, like the interior of a natural history museum.

Yet it had to be The Beast. There was nobody else it could possibly be! For as long as Raymond had come here in his dreams, he had always been alone, and was joined only by The Monster in his nightmares, not even so much as a cricket to disturb their duels. They were the only two to have ever set foot in this place, indeed the only two who _could_ tread here at all.

Yet the hooded figure was here anyway, speaking through a mixture of borderline incoherant snarling and sobbing, as if the very flesh of his larynx was rebelling against him. In a way, it was:

"YoU Are nOt SAfe."

What an understatement. _Of course_ he wasn't safe! He was _here_ , in the field! Considering how these dreams usually ended, Raymond was expecting a crossbow bolt, a spear-tip, a hit to the head from a club, or literally anything else, to violently strike at any moment.

"Well of course I'm not safe!" Raymond began gesticulating. "Have you _seen_ this fucking place? The fire alone is unsafe, let alone the guy who's _usually_ here."

"i comE FoR yOu. I...WE...HUnt lOng TIme fOr yoU."

"Speaking of which, who the hell are you?"

"NikolAS, DO You kNOw NOt?"

"What's your name?"

It paused, as if it had no name.

No, wait, scratch that. It paused as if it's name had been _stolen_.

"I aM...AGaMEmnOn, ANniHiLatOr oF wOrLdS."

Raymond was taken aback. "Well gee, what brings you here, _annihilator?_ "

It removed the hood, and plopped a glass-eyed taxidermied fox head onto the gaping flesh wound that was its neck.

"wE WHo hUNT lonG TiME...hUnG my faCE oN A waLL."

At once, the fox's face warped into that of The Omnipred, needleteeth and all."

"i cOnsUmEd tHE PoOR sOuL to SuRVIVe the WINtEr-"

The fox was back "-tHaT baStARD eVEN tOoK mY nAmE. mADe hIm OnE oF Us."

Raymond's unhappy place had become a hellish dungeon, filled to the brim with the souls of the damned, all The Omnipred's previous victims. First and foremost among them stood the now eyeless fox, chained to a stake and mired in a thick, black tar, as he reached for Raymond with a strange black object in his skeletal hand.

"TAKE thIs! kIll mE! vAnqUiSH hIM! i bEG OF tHee, dO WHat i cANNot, BEfOre WE ArE ForcED to TRap yOu DOWN HeRe!"

The ancient fox thrust an obsidian machete into Raymond's arms as the rest of the dream dissolved into smoke, leaving Raymond, the formerly-headless fox, and Agamemnon himself, the latter utterly furious, the only things in the darkness.

As expected, a crossbow bolt lodged itself betwixt Raymond's eyes as Agamemnon's claws shot for his neck. As it consumed him, again, Raymond saw the damnation of his predecessor: fallen in a sunlit frigid field dusted by snow, an arrow protruding from his side as the ginger-haired pale-skinned and heavily tattooed Omnipred tore into his flesh with its bloodstained hands, the very same obsidian knife hitched to a leather strap the ancient hunter wore 'round his waist.

"doN't LEt hiM tAkE YoU, MY cHilD."

* * *

He stirred from his sleep with a groan. This was it, surely.

Today was the day, like all the other ones in this drab and depressing prison.

Except Today would surely be the day they'd strap him to the chair, the day those _fucking_ cud-chewers would well and truly take away _everything_ he'd ever had.

Today was the day that Nicholas Wilde would finally get to redeem his one-way ticket to...

He reached to scratch his neck, which was itching like hell, only to find that his collar was missing, and realizing this, he awoke with a frightened start, suddenly aware of his surroundings. The scene that presented itself to him now was momentarily terrifying, even in spite of the utter lack of the hellish landscape he'd been told to expect, before the scrambled memories of fantastic and arguably impossible events from the last 24 hours came flooding back all at once, painting a picture straight out of some sideways-whacked out bizzaro fantasy land where car-bombing killer robots hid in plain sight, where trenchcoat wearing weirdos could portal in and out at any moment from the alien spaceships that they were just casually crash-landing in backwater podunks, and where nefarious blacksuits and razorbacks were lying in wait 'round every corner, armed to the teeth and with orders to kill from what could charitably be described as the monster in Eric Harris' closet.

"Hey you, come with me if you want to live."

And through it all he'd somehow survived. The thrill of the previous day's fourfold escape (first from the jail, then from the ZPD van _and_ the razorbacks, and finally to the relay.) had worn off, and now Nicky was more confused than anything else. He had been sleeping on a bed of yellowed hay, in a shadowy corner of a not too musty old barn, with beams of sun lazily drifting in through the occasional open window. The walls of the building were both theoretically minimalistic and practically fascinating, the endless contortions and patterns of the wood grain being especially eye-catching to Nicky, as they wound across the greying and ever so slightly crooked beams of the barn. Such beams emerged from the dirt floor in columns, supporting the roof, and from the nearest column on a cast-iron hook, there was hung an unlit oil lantern, slightly rusted in some places, but overall maintaining the appearance of not-too-infrequent use.

It was then that Nicky realized that, aside from the prison-issued briefs, he was naked. He noted with a growing horror that the trenchcoat he'd been lent had presumably been taken back by its semi-maverick owner, who had also probably gone to the trouble of folding up the jumpsuit and stashing it atop a wooden chest that sat in the center of the room.

As he got himself up and continued to look around the place, it slowly dawned upon him that maybe, just maybe, he'd actually managed to do the impossible, the unthinkable: _escape_. Or perhaps his whole life, the city, the prison, the cops, had all been a terrible dream, and he'd start remembering his _real_ life any second now.

This particularly noteworthy delusion of his was broken the moment he looked down and noticed his stubby fingertips, still bearing the scars of Zystopia.

And if that horrid city had been real, as real as this place, then where had that city gone off to, and where had this place been for all this time? Just how far _had_ they run last night, and where the hell were they now?

 _Were they safe?_

Nicky began to smell something vaguely familiar, and as he approached the door, he noticed that someone was blasting what sounded like a Moog Cookbook remix of "More Than A Feeling" over fairly decent speakers. Something was burning, and yet there was something beyond that, a sensation he couldn't quite name. Nicky peeked his head around the corner, and was simultaneously relieved and annoyed by what he saw:

A large bonfire was being fed with logs by what appeared to be a porcelain wolf by the name of Harvey. He and the other androids, all shirtless, including Georgina, now in the permanent form of a generally shitty looking ochre dingo, appeared rather bizarre with the thin graphene power lines running into their chests. They were charging themselves from a snaking extension cord that ran back into the barn, and Georgina, for whatever reason, was looking rather unhappy about something.

Even now, Nicky didn't fully trust her.

Or any of the androids.

Come to think of it, Nicky didn't fully trust the mammals, either.

Meanwhile, some other biological agents (including a few visibly cybernetic beings) had set up a blackjack table with a boombox in one corner, and Raymond, wearing a rather ridiculous chef's hat, had set himself to the task of fiddling with an old galvanized steel bucket he'd hung from a tripod over the fire, although what exactly was in that bucket remained to be seen.

"Hey!" He called, having seen Nicky peeking out from the barn " _It's about time you woke up._ And dare I say it: aside from the neck, you're looking _fabulous._ " Raymond said this last word in what was probably the gayest voice he could muster, sending the others into fits of laughter. Considering where he sat on the Kinsey Scale, he was only being slightly facetious.

Not that he'd fuck himself, or any version thereof. Bi-curious or not, Raymond wasn't _that_ kinky.

"Hey Raymond, is breakfast done?" Jason, who had just swiped a glance at his cards with the polished chromium claw he called a right hand, was getting hungry.

Raymond, his own not-so-cybernetic claws now slightly protruding from his fingertips (a visible sign of relief, as he was no longer in Zystopia), stuck a pair of tongs into the bucket whilst his left hand was thumbing through a tattered old Julia Child paperback. As he brought the tongs out of the water, Nicky got a glimpse of some weird brown wiggly crustacean-looking thing on the end of it, and suppressed the urge to gag.

"Ehh...it'll be a few more minutes."

"Raymond, what the hell was that?"

"Those are crayfish, Nicky, and they're breakfast. Ya' ever had lobster?"

Nicky walked over to the card-table and shrugged. "Nope."

"Well, these are sort of like 'em, but smaller, and we fished them out of a nearby creek instead of a distant ocean. How are you feeling?"

Nicky groaned, daring to yawn in such a way as to "brandish" some of his teeth, although it wasn't a full yawn. No, he wasn't quite _that_ bold. _Not yet._

"I had some very strange dreams last night-"

"As did I." Interjected Raymond.

"-and I'm hungry as hell." Nicky continued. "Aside from that, I _guess_ I'm OK...What is this place? Where the hell are we?"

Raymond was somewhat relieved. Nicky appeared to be at least partially resilient against the onset of bareneck madness, although Raymond, from experience with other escapees (oppressed imgurries who hailed from zystopian worlds, typically preds), knew it was inevitable. Nicky had spent many of his formative years repressing most if not all of his emotions, and sooner or later, they'd start pouring out in the form of uncontrollable angsty mood swings. When a man couldn't remember a time before the cage, freedom would often be enough to drive that mammal insane, and Nicky, no longer trapped, would have to come to terms with the wide open spaces of the outside. Although Nicky hand't endured nearly as much of The Beast's telepathic assaults as he, Nicky was thoroughly fucked up in his own way, and Raymond believed they'd both be paying the shrinks many visits, assuming they got out of here alive.

And right now, it seemed a reasonable assumption to make.

 _Sure,_ Raymond _had_ just discovered that the proverbial monster in his closet was alive and well, wanted him dead (or worse), had the resources of an entire city-state at his disposal to make that happen, and was probably at this very second trying to reverse engineer the relay, in hopes of opening a portal and finishing his hunt, but what were the odds of that _actually_ happening?

38744 to 1 against...or in other words, practically 0!

* * *

The sun crept over the horizon at an agonizingly lethargic pace, as if it were hesitating in fear of what sat within the silver speeding streamlined train upon which its rays gleamed.

And considering that Agamemnon himself sat within the specially chartered express, this was a semi-reasonable fear. _She_ had told it not to associate with Agamemnon, and with good reason. The Gaia had salvaged all that could be salvaged from her greatest failure long ago, and there was nothing left of the once proud hunter but pure evil encased in a rotting shell.

Approximately ~743 miles away in what was left of BunnyBurrow (and as The Omnipred's train was doing one mile every 18 seconds, an exact figure is pointless to obtain), what was left of Jebediah the madman hyena, clad only in a tame collar and chains, his undead torso fully on display for all to see (the lower half of his body nowhere to be seen), was tightly restrained to a hospital bed and jacked up on sedatives in the otherwise deserted savage ward.

As things had gone from bad to worse to _clusterfuck_ , he'd stepped off of the battlefield and into the ZPD HQ, as they were better equipped to relay the relevant information on what was now a _battlefield_ to him...only to be gravely injured in the explosion that was set off by and which also killed ZBAI agent Feldman, along with half of the present blacksuits, and just about everybody else in the building.

On one hand, the doctors had somehow managed to save him.

On the other hand, they'd only done so _after_ thoroughly humiliating him as both a "savage" and as a biological anomaly, taking the time to run _dozens_ of somewhat painful medical experiments on that latter note. These things tended to happen when you kept your identity (and indeed your very existence) secret from your subordinates, who thought you just another razorback in a suit.

If he hadn't been chained down, he would've eaten them all, with or without his legs.

 _Number One?_

The voice of his superior, The Omnipred, echoed through his head, although due to the sedatives it wasn't quite clear as day. Perhaps one could say it was clear like a flashlight beam through a thick fog: Visible, but hard to pinpoint. At any rate, Jebediah only got a telepathic "call" from him (rather than an actual call by phone) when he was in trouble, although, judging by the fact that Agamemnon had neglected to use his full name, he wasn't in a lot of trouble. Nevertheless, they were both...frustrated...to say the least.

"Yes?"

"It's talking!" The doctor was rather worried to say the least. The tan rabbit didn't want _it_ to wake up. He didn't want _it_ to talk. Hell, he didn't want the ungodly _monster_ that sat in the savage ward to exist! The head nurse, however, had other ideas. Having ravenously devoured works such as _The Andromeda Strain_ and _The Hot Zone_ , most of the experiments had been her idea in one way or another.

 _Who was that? Why aren't you answering your phone?_

"With all due respect, sir," he wheezed "those _rapscallions_ confiscated it."

 _Who?_

"The doctors. I was...injured...Could you please tell Major Ferdinand and the other Razorbacks to get over here? I am in need of their assistance, and a few minutes to straighten things up. Then we can talk, uninterrupted."

 _Do you really have to?_

"Not to be rude, but I AM MISSING MY LEGS, I AM CURRENTLY _CHAINED_ TO A BED IN A SAVAGE WARD, AND I AM WEARING A FUCKING _TAME COLLAR_ AND BEING STARED AT BY A BUNCH OF CUD-CHEWING SHIT FOR BRAIN-"

Jebediah's collar went red.

 _I see. Sorry for the trouble, but I **do** want an explanation, Number One._

"And you will get one."

Major Ferdinand entered the ward.

"Alright, where is he?"

The doctor pointed as if he were a goody-two-shoes tattletale asshat.

"Oh. #1, I didn't expect _you_ to be here." Unlike many of his subordinates, the Major _had_ seen what Jebediah considered to be his face.

"Major?"

"Yes?"

"Would it be too much trouble to get me a suit, and to throw these doctors in the brig?"

"As you can see," the doctor interjected "he's clearly delusional. Talking to himself _and_ giving orders? It's almost like-"

The doctor was rudely interrupted by the hard click of Major Ferdinand's shotgun.

"You heard 'em. Off to the closet."

Several minutes later, the Major and several other razorbacks were wheeling the zombified hyena (well _technically_ Jebediah is a lich, but we don't really have a proper, scary sounding adjective for that in the English language, now do we?) down to the hospital morgue. Embarrassing as it was, it was far more efficient than having Jebediah dragging himself there by the arms. He would also need what strength he had left for what he was about to do.

For what he had to do.

"I had just finished speaking to him when you lot arrived. I know he's a telepath or something, but _damn_ you're fast. If you weren't already my second-in-command, I'd have you promoted for this."

"Much appreciated, sir, but we _were_ on our way to investigate a reported savage in the hospital..."

"I see-" They entered an elevator. Ironically, Jebediah's eyes were tightly shut. Like most liches, he despised the bright lights of the hospital, strongly preferring the filtered shade of his suit's visor. "-Now tell me again, you said they brought in the army? After the explosion?"

"Affirmative." The Major pressed the button, closing the doors and sending the elevator to the basement.

"And what of the explosion itself who, or _what_ set it off?"

The Major sighed. "It was Feldman. In the his own words, the ZBAI planned to poke the hornet's nest with whatever the fuck that thing in the crates was. I dare say they angered the nest."

Major Ferdinand handed Jebediah a photograph taken shortly after the now scuttled relay was successfully taken by army personnel. The crashed relay, lit by the harsh glare of arc-sodium construction lights, dimly yet prominently stood out against the early morning sky.

"So that's it?" The elevator door opened into a hallway.

"Yes."

"Major? Would be be so kind as to accompany me for my upcoming conference with The Boss? You're far more familiar with what happened after the explosion than I, and _He_ wants answers."

"Perhaps I will."

They entered the morgue.

"In the meantime, however, I will need your help for _this_ -" he said as he gestured to the gaping wound that sat where his pelvis used to be, drooling entrails and all. "-But first, let's find out what we have to work with." As he said this, he gingerly put on a pair of cheap sunglasses in what constituted a shitty Micheal Jackson cosplay. They weren't his visor, but they were better than nothing.

The Major went from one mortuary to the next, flooding the room with a chilly draft and the subdued fragrance of decay, as each and every single cold chamber was opened.

As expected, most of the ones containing anything at all were holding rabbits or hares. Perhaps the fresh ones would be good for lifeblood, if not much else. Fortunately for Jebediah, the body of some ram who'd died of cirrhosis of the liver, and the corpse of a suicidal Gideon Grey, were also to be found. It would be tough, but he'd patched a body together from less.

He'd probably cannibalize the ram for organs and muscle augments, while relying on the fox for the underlying skeletal structure, pelt, and penis.

What? Undead Frankenstein-esque abomination or not, Jebediah still had his _needs_.

"Well-" he unsheathed his knife and reached for the sewing kit "-let's begin."

* * *

"What is this place? Where the hell are we?" Nicky restated, as if some mildly verbose lecture on bareneck madness and a tangential aside about an apprentice necromancer had de-railed the narrative, and everybody had forgotten his question.

"Somewhere in Sherwood Forest, V-137." S-Class Jason answered.

Nicky eyed the card table inquisitively. "Deal me in. Also, _what?_ "

"Credit where it's due, Jason, that _was_ a perfectly accurate answer..." Raymond chimed in from his makeshift kitchen. "...although my guest here is unlikely to know what that means."

"Well sir, I don't mean to be a dick," The mongoose absentmindedly shuffled his cards as he spoke, stealing a glance or two at Nicky's crotch. "But I can't deal you in until you put on some more clothes. This ain't a naturist club, you know."

Raymond chuckled. "Well do you mind watching this pot for me? I'll show him around and find a decent costume."

Like his comrades, Raymond was evidently relaxed, for he had every reason to think he was perfectly safe, at least for now.

And why would he not? This version of the British Empire was a relatively egalitarian state on the level of pred-prey relations, and was far too primitive on a technological level to even _imagine_ an Orwellian society, let alone engineer one of those so-called 'tame' collars. Not to mention the fact that they were literally multiple realities away from the Beast and his minions, who would soon find themselves answering to the most predatory bean counters in the known multiverse.

The very thought of the bill sent shivers down Raymond's spine. _Sucks to be them._

"So where are we?"

As he opened the barn door, Raymond began his explanation. "You asked where we were and Agent Jason, that mongoose guy with the arm thingy, he gave you the _correct_ answer, but you probably didn't get a word of it."

"Yeah, so?"

"So instead, I'll give a different sort of answer. It won't be the correct answer, _not even close_ , but it'll make sense."

"So you're patronizing me?"

"No, I...I'm giving you an answer that will make sense to you."

" _Right_. So you're patronizing me."

"If _that's_ what you wish to call it, then so be it."

They came upon the chest, atop which Nicky's jumpsuit had been placed.

"I'm not trying to talk down to you or anything, it's just that the real worlds can be and often are are extraordinarily complicated and confusing places."

He noted Nicky's confusion.

"For example, the real world **s** themselves. There are many of them, which is why we pluralize them in speech."

He opened the chest, revealing several sets of semi-glossy grey outfits within.

"So, _where_ are we?" He began.

Raymond swiveled back towards his counterpart. "Well, my not-so-evil twin, we, for all practical purposes, are on an alien planet. No matter how far you try to walk, you'll never set foot in that horrid city ever again, and they'll never be able to get to us here without a ship. Of course, the aliens here aren't really aliens. In fact, they look and talk exactly like us, because in a way, they _are_ us: different permutations of the same meta'versial waveform-pattern repeating across and throughout an n-dimensional bubble."

Nicky stood there in silence.

"In other words, its the same Earth you know and love, only it isn't the same, and in fact in a few ways it is as different from your homeworld as you can possibly get. So which way goes to Zootopia from here?"

Raymond, having set up his punchline, grinned in a fashion that was more like a teen who'd snuck their way into in a porno theater than a kid in a candy store, on account of the thinly veiled hedonistic corruption that lay behind his not-at-all-innocent smile.

" _None of 'em!_ In the book of reality, we are in a whole new chapter now, and it would literally be as hard to walk back to that city from here as it would be to walk to _the Moon_. In other words, it can't be done."

"Sure, whatever." It was as if Nicky had a talent for killing the mood.

"Now, about your clothes, just pick a fox-sized set from the chest and put them on. Also, if you want it back, here's the scarf I lent you."

Raymond began walking back outside.

"Hey, uh, Raymond?"

"Yes?"

"Does this place have a bathroom?"

"Oh yeah-" He turned to point. "-the electrosan is over there in the stall. Just make sure it all goes in the fancy tin-can, batten down _both_ hatches when you're done, and then press the big red button to incinerate it all!"

Nicky's face began to contort in all sorts of comedic ways at the thought of a fire-breathing toilet.

"Don't worry, it won't _fire_ on you when the lid's open, and hey, it's a hell of a lot better than those stank-ass latrines they've got in the village, that's for sure."

Raymond began to exit the barn.

"Wait, they don't have toilets here?"

"Well Nicky-" he paused before exiting the room "-this world, through a fairly rare combination of theocratic hegemony and prolonged cultural dark ages, is still stuck in the late medieval period. Knights, castles, _Robin Hood_ , and all the swashbuckling-swordfuckery you could imagine! I say it's time to party like it's 1492!"

As Nicky went over to the electrosan to take a much needed shit, Raymond hurriedly exited the barn, and began scanning the crowd for a buck in mirrorshades who he'd been told was Relay Station 294's customs agent. Having tracked him down at the poker table, Raymond himself pulled up a chair aside him and requested a favor.

"Hey, that guest of mine..."

"Yeah? The fox?"

"He's starting to show _the symptoms_ , and I'd like to get the interview done _before_ we have to throw him in the brig."

"Are you sure?" the cervine agent asked in a dangerously serious tone, the sort used when one _knew_ it was true, but was really hoping that it wasn't. After all, he'd seen bareneck madness before, and it was _not_ pretty.

"Well, he's been resilient as hell, but sooner or later it's _gotta'_ come out. It always does...and he was _really_ angsty for an hour or so last night."

"And where is he now?"

"Probably dropping _a big one_ on the firecan." Considering the fact that Nicky had neglected to relieve himself on the train, he had to have been holding it for at least 24 hours.

"Raymond, I ain't no shrink, but you don't seem like yourself today."

"Well, we've _both_ been through some crazy stuff lately, and he's applying for a visa. Can you do that for me, and could you deal me in, Jason?"

"Sure." They both replied.

* * *

Nicky, following an old-school black power cable (presumably set up before the mass importation of metallic hydrogen from V-127), approached the rearmost stall in the barn, which was adorned with a squeaky old plywood panel that served as the door to the makeshift latrine, complete with a crescent moon shape carved through it. A faded yellow steel pipe that was beginning to rust in one or two places had been bolted onto the door for its handle, which ran from over 6 feet up to a mere 6 inches from the bottom of the door itself, as if it had actually been designed for mammals of all sizes.

Something he'd rarely seen at all back in the city.

As the door was already cracked, he pulled it open, and proceeded to gasp in one part horror and two parts awe. It was like somebody took the design aesthetic (and frankly, the size) of a 1950's muscle car, technicolor teal chrome-plated paintjob and all, and fashioned a retrofuturistic sci-fi toilet from it.

The electrosan itself, designed with the occasional elephant in mind (as evidenced by the label which advertised a maximum rated capacity of 25 litres), was half the size of a refrigerator (not counting the processed materials storage unit), its lid a solid 3 foot 8 inches off the ground. It was shaped like a trapezoid, with the shorter parallel face (on which the big red button of death was mounted, alongside a small green power gauge that currently read "CHARGED") facing the door, with a pair of staggered steps, which doubled as footrests, ascending to the seat on the non-parallel sides. Of particular note was the ladder placed on the left side of the device, the pair of inch-thick chrome latches that held the lid shut, and the roll of toilet paper that was mounted on a telescoping hinged beam, as if they expected it to be moved or otherwise adjusted in normal use (Although as Raymond would explain, a narrow majority of Consortium residents preferred bidets, but as there was no running water here, it was a moot point.)

On one hand, the contentious problems of furgonomics had produced the strangest toilet Nicky had ever seen, and it was almost intimidating. However, the simple fact that _someone_ had gone to all of the effort of designing and building this thing, which could _theoretically_ be used by even the biggest mammals, while still being functional (somehow) for everybody else, down to the ladders that Finnick would've considered a godsend, had subtly impressed Nicky, who'd counted more attempts at inclusivity in this commode than in all of his Zootopia.

Upon climbing up the side of the thing (an activity Nicky hadn't partaken in since he was 7) and opening the lid, he was greeted by the faint smell of ash and bleach, and a series of color-coded horseshoe-shaped toilet seats, all nestled within each other like Russian Dolls, going from a seat smaller than an actual horseshoe to one theoretically big enough for a hippo. After lifting 3 of the smaller seats out of the way, Nicky gazed upon the relatively minimalist chamber of the electrosan: an unpolished steel-copper alloy drum with a concave domed base, a horseshoe shaped metal stir-rod with what appeared to be the blades of a blender emerging from its center, and a ring of 7 one centimeter holes at the bottom of the drum. The grey drum, interlaced with darker grey electrodes and pockmarked by the grim sight of yet another ladder (in case somebody fell in), was designed to allow any fluids or ashes to fall through for further treatment, while confining solid waste in the drum where it could be safely ground up and incinerated via magnetically controlled plasma jets.

With all of that said and done, Nicky dropped his briefs, and sat down, noting a tattered 1978 copy of _The Old Farmer's Almanac_ hanging on a nail on the wall several seconds later.

 _Too late to grab that now_.

Several minutes later, he'd gotten off, and excitedly pressed the big red button, only to be told off by a relatively emotionless angry buzzer.

"Close lid" The indicator glowed.

With an audible _harrumph,_ Nicky closed the _enormous_ (and motion dampened) lid, battened _both_ latches, and hopped back down.

This time, the machine responded with only a pleasant beep, as the inboard computer began analyzing the drum's contents, and how to most efficiently incinerate all of it.

Roughly 2.3 seconds later, Nicky heard a subdued humming and a mild buzzing coming from the electrosan, as he applied the hand sanitizer. He replaced the starchy briefs, and, noting a new (and admittedly cleaner) pair among the clothes Raymond had given him, thought better of it, and changed into them, before getting into the rest of his new Consortium outfit. As he walked away, pleasantly surprised at how soft the mysterious glossy fabric was, and unpleasantly surprised by the giraffe waiting outside the stall, the electrosan, its latest (somewhat minor) task complete, was once again silent.

* * *

A notably relieved and slightly horrified Nicky emerged from the barn, now clad in the same glossy grey T-shirt and pants as the other relay crewman, his chest adorned with a grey-black gradient confined to a zone in the shape of a downward facing right triangle.

"My god, this underwear-"

"-is a hell of a lot better than what they gave you in prison? Yeah. it's nice. Hey Nicky, remember when you asked me about what you'd have to do to stay out here, with us? Well, if a visa's what you're looking for, _he's_ the guy you want to talk to."

"Do I _have_ to? I just wanna' play some goddamn poker...maybe grab a bite to eat while we're at it."

The abnormally tall cervine, staring from behind his mirrored aviators as always, stooped down to face Nicky.

"Listen, I don't like bureaucracy any more than you do, but we need to know that you're _cool_ before we let you in-"

as if to accentuate his point, the buck pulled a pre-rolled joint from his breast pocket and lit it using a brass-plated zippo that had been emblazoned with the jolly roger.

"-we can't be letting any _squares_ into our little Consortium, now can we?"

After taking a decent drag for himself, he offered it to Nicky, who just stood there awkwardly, slightly dumbfounded.

"...No, we cannot, so let's go somewhere private and get this over with. It'll only take a few minutes, I swear."

"Yeah, they _always_ say that when there's paperwork."

"Oh no, it's just an interview."

" _Fine_ "

He marched back to the barn in defeat, the customs agent tailing him to what would become the makeshift conference room.

"Hey, Georgina!" Raymond whispered.

"Yes?" Her dull, melancholic response, as understandable under the circumstances as it was, seemed slightly alarming to Raymond, who had been used to her semi-upbeat tone.

Then again, Georgina had lost just about all of her shapeshifting abilities as a result of her peripheral co-processor being lobotomized by Judy's bullet. After an hour-long procedure that bordered on vivisection, involving the removal of her now dead secondskin and the all-too-manual "locking" of her otherwise flexible endoskeleton, she'd regained some semblance of functional normalcy, now as a dingy-looking dingo that could change neither colors, nor shape, nor species. In other words, Georgina was now unable to do the one thing she had been put on these many Earths to do, and already she was getting a tad depressed over it. Like many androids, she defined herself in part by what she was good for, and no longer being good for anything was weighing down on her morale.

It didn't help that she belonged to the highly experimental J-09 class, a small batch of 3 dozen shapeshifter prototypes who'd been created on the Hive Queen's whim. No mass birthing runs, no user's manual, and only a handful of replacement parts that would have to be scavenged from her what remained of her suicidal siblings.

And having been deemed failed experiments, little more than sentient wastes of precious metals, most had elected for self-termination, which was extraordinarily ironic considering how many other Consortium-employed androids had been retrofitted with reverse-engineered secondskins in an attempt to imitate some of Georgina's abilities. However the scientists could only reverse-engineer so much of her workings without violating the treaty (let alone build more of them, which was expressly forbidden), and as the schematics and spare parts for the J-9 class were under lock and key on V-127, Georgina knew she'd have to petition The Hive Queen for access to them.

And owing to an incident involving a V-day parade, A trigger happy veteran, a shotgun to the face, pop rocks, and looking a bit too much like the mammals she had been built to imitate, they were _not_ on good terms.

Well, maybe not the pop rocks. But the point stands.

She and her remaining sisters had forfeited their citizenship and fled for the then recently contacted Consortium, and had been personally banished by The Queen herself for daring to defy her orders. If she (or any of the other J-9's) were ever to return, she would, in the words of the disgruntled Queen: "be melted down into something less useless."

There were three types of androids who came to The Consortium: Those who were bored (such as Harvey), those who saw money to be made (such as the late Alejandro), and those who were afraid, desperate, or who were otherwise edgy to the point of feeling trapped on a planet full of metaphorically soulless bureaucrats. Georgina could've been the textbook example of the latter, afraid, desperate, _and_ avant garde enough to consider a mammal as her friend.

"Keep an eye on Nicky. He's about to lose it."

"Alright." And without another word, she unplugged herself and left Raymond to resume his cooking. Mutilated or not, she had at least this task to do, which was one more thing to put between herself and suicide.

"Methinks the crayfish are done! Who's hungry?"

* * *

"Are...you all right man?" The customs agent asked, knowing that the answer was probably 'no'. He too had also been to the psych wards, and he knew what the collars did to the poor souls who had to wear them for too long.

"Oh, me? I'm just a little angsty right now. You know, almost dying and all, only to be rescued by a guy who claims to be me, and his friend who is apparently a robot but is really a demon."

Georgina laughed. "You know, I'm not _really_ a demon. I only said so to scare the cops away."

"Well...uh...your name was Nick?"

"Nick."

"Well Nick, it seems like you're _cool_. At least for now." The buck in mirrorshades got up from the makeshift table and began walking towards the back of the barn, mentally preparing himself for what was to come next. "Hey, I need you to do me a small favor."

"As long as I get breakfast and poker..." Strangely, the android was following both of them. Indeed, this whole time, she'd been keeping a _very_ close eye on Nicky.

They approached a large metal door that currently hung ajar on some very large hinges. Excepting the 6 inch porthole and the mail slot, it seemed like the door to a safe. The room it guarded was well lit (albeit by a single rose tinted CFL), and featured a white mattress, beige padded walls, and a single small panel across the room from the door, resembling a lightswitch without the cover. Indeed, upon closer inspection, it _was_ a lightswitch, only there were two loose wires emerging from the wall.

"What the hell do you want me to do?" Nicky asked, as the buck walked around to the other side of the door.

"There's a pair of wires coming from the wall in there. I need you to pinch those two wires together for a sec..."

"OK, whatever you-"

Nicky was interrupted by the sound of the door slamming shut, the customs agent frantically locking the door.

"What the hell?!"

Several seconds later, the buck, this time over an intercom, answered.

"Nick, I need you to calm down, OK?"

" _Open the goddamn door!_ "

"I'm sorry, but I don't think that would be a good idea."

"YOU BETTER OPEN THAT FUCKING DOOR, ASSHOLE!" Already Nick's shouting was becoming a scream

"Listen, that collar's been screwing with your head for 20 years, and now that it's off, all those repressed emotions are going to start crawling out of the woodwork. For everyone's sake, it's better if you stay in here for now. To your right, there's a large, red button. If you need anything, press it.

Nick immediately pressed the button, comically marked "Room Service" with an anti-cathartic click.

"You need something?"

" ** _I NEED YOU TO LET ME OUT OF THIS FUCKING LOONY BIN!_** "

"Not until you calm down, buddy. I'm Sorry, but those collars _really_ fucked you up _bad_ , and-"

" ** _NO YOU FUCKED UP BAD YOU LITTLE CUNTFACE!_** " And with that final exclamation, Nicky collapsed on the floor in hysterics. The customs agent proceeded to shove a few granola bars through the mail slot before walking away.

It could be over in minutes, or it could take days.

But until Nicky got a grip on his limbic system, there was nothing more anyone could do to help him.

* * *

Somewhere in the bowels of Zootopia, V-293:

April, 1992

The bus's windows had been sealed ages ago, yet little Nicholas, attempting in vein to ignore the fact that he was on this bus on a weekend, tried to open one anyway, struggling (and ultimately failing) against yet another measure built by the system to keep the "savages" contained. In reality, it was a bus full of 6 year old children (plus or minus a few years).

Well, no, it wasn't quite that simple.

It was a Zystopian bus, transporting barenecked chompers from the orphanarium. Although the research strongly indicated that they only started regressing to savagery during puberty, many did not feel _completely_ safe around prepubescent chompers, and a small group of the smaller ones (mostly rodents, who'd lost the size advantage when Raymond was still in diapers) had been pushing to lower the taming age ever since the collars themselves had been introduced.

Nick, having given up in his arduous struggle to get some fresh air on the bus, was powerless to do more than stare at a group of rabbits, squirrels, and other miscellaneous prey animals (all shorter than 3 feet) standing on the curb, waving their propaganda signs in the general direction of anybody who got close, the signs themselves adorned with images of a notably vulpine Dennis the Menace, and a handful of prey kids with black eyes or a tuft of shredded fur. More than anything else, Nick envied their jackets. It had been an especially cold winter, and despite the fact that it was April, this Zootopia, lacking any sort of climate wall, was taking its sweet, sweet time to heat up.

"Why are we on the bus? It's Sunday! School don't start 'till tomorrow."

"I don't know." the weasel aside him answered.

The smelly old bus slowly turned a corner and came upon an equally old brick building with a faded black door. A second bus full of prey kids had already arrived, and said cud-chewers were busying themselves with marching (single file, of course) into the black building.

"Alright, it's Nick's turn to be the line-leader-" the driver, A ram, called exclaimed. "Time for you _heathens_ to go to church."

 _Church? What's that?_

Nick had overheard the guards "discussing" religion, usually employing what some would call the "physiological argument" (prolonged beatings), and by cultural osmosis, he'd learned...well...he wasn't exactly a theology major, but he knew the basics: Some special somebody had a kid who got tempted for 40 days by another chain smoking guy with pointy red ears and a black suit. The kid told the other guy to go fuck himself, and was then nailed to a board and died, and if you clasp your hands and talk to the kid, you'd go to heaven. The kid also wrote a long, relatively boring book full of things that you were not supposed to do.

Little Nicholas had prayed to the kid before bed one night, and was bitterly disappointed the next morning, although he reasoned (as much as a 6 year old fox kit can reason) that he hadn't really been talking to the kid: He hadn't exactly been in the room at the time, and despite doing his best to imitate the adults, Nick had been talking to the ceiling.

But not this time. They'd said this was his _house,_ as in, the place were the kid lives.

Even though he died.

But it was his house! This time, _for sure,_ Nick would get to talk to him! Although, come to think of it, he had no idea what to say, and on that note, he'd spent much of the bus ride brainstorming (once again, as much as he could at that age), and he stepped off the bus just as he realized exactly what he was going to say.

Nick, the wind ruffling what was left of his winter coat as he dashed across the sidewalk, got to the door just before it closed, the other pred kids all behind him as he mistakenly followed a young sinewy gazelle in front of him (who herself was the end of the previous line), as they went up the flight of stairs to the second floor.

An entirely innocent, understandable mistake, but still one he'd be cruelly punished for.

As he began his climb, Nick noted a second set of stairs descending into a musty basement, creepy, decrepit, and permeated by the mutterings of an equally old furnace. The whole stairwell was barely lit (even to him, although there hadn't had a lot of time for the "night vision" to properly kick in), and Nick was now as eager to get out of it as he was to see the kid.

The Gazelle, reaching the top of the stairs, hooked a sharp turn to the left and stepped through a door into a rather peculiar classroom: Well lit, high-ceilings, whiteboards and bookshelves everywhere, it was inviting enough, and the walls themselves painted with hills and trees as if they were in an orchard of sorts. Some of the fruits on some of the trees bore the inscriptions of names and dates in black sharpie, each one commemorating a baptism.

Nick paused briefly as he stared into the room (its occupants, including a greymuzzled old ewe, the teacher) beginning to stare back.

The aforementioned ewe got up and approached the door, as if she were going to close it.

"Hey!" the little fox interjected, on the off chance that _the kid_ was in there. "How do you go to heaven?"

The ewe chuckled, although something was simply _off_ about her smile.

"Sorry, but this room is for the children of God."

As her face soured into a scowl that could kill a man from a mile away, Nick realized that he'd fucked up big time.

"Things of the devil belong in _the basement!_ "

With an authoritative shove that was as utterly detached as it was personally infuriated, the ewe practically knocked Nick's socks off as she sent the poor fox kit tumbing down the stairs into the darkness below.

A faint "pobrecito" could be heard before she slammed the door, plunging Nick further into the darkness of the stairwell that, under the circumstances, could readily be interpreted as an allegory for hell itself.

Slightly less than a week later. Raymond was once again on the bus, this time trembling in fear. Never mind the kid or even the devils, all Nick could think about was the teacher, who had not seen fit to spare the rod in any way whatsoever. Raymond's ass had been sore for 2 whole days, and he had every reason to fear that it would only get worse.

* * *

Author's note: yes, I did my research, and according to that research, the electrosan can safely dispose of 125% of a standard elephant bowel movement. I've had parts of this chapter sitting around since mid fall, and it's really nice to finally publish them. This (relatively slow chapter) was also slow to write, although the next one will bring things back up to speed. Chapter 14's title is also arguably its cliffhanger ending, after all: Whatever _did_ become of the rabbit?

Also, the last two chapters have both had a "downer" scene, in which religion makes a character miserable. They are not an attempt to argue for or against the metaphysical proposition of theism, or any version of theistic belief, and should not be construed as an attack on any specific faith, dogma, cult, or what-have-you. However, I have repeatedly encountered a rather frustrating meme that is as dangerous as it is ill-informed: the politically correct notion that religion is inherently good and should not be subject to criticism, or that, at the very least, it is harmless, even if it is very, very wrong.

I'm not trying to critique religious dogmas, doctrines, or beliefs with these scenes. If I wanted to do that, I'd just have Raymond _say_ it outright. However, whether through prohibitions on potentially lifesaving medicinal research, never-ending holy wars and ongoing disputes over "promised" lands, countless cases of sexual assault and pedophilia, or the litany of ways in which it can foster, enable, and encourage rampant xenophobia and bigotry, organized religion has been a force of great evil throughout history, and it's my view that the "harmless faith" meme is at best naive, and at worst, in the case of Gideon Grey of V-137 (or _any_ of the real world homosexuals currently in a similar predicament), tragically and lamentably wrong. The institution of supposedly infallible religious faith has been hoisted upon a pillar of undue privilege, where it is somehow deemed beyond the standards and critiques we apply to all other topics in life, and it is this pillar that I wish to attack with the downer scenes.

There's a reason why V-137 is stuck in the medieval times, and why theocracies tend to be terrible places to live. That's not to say that the religions of the world are inherently evil. Indeed, the truth is far more complicated than that, and organized religion can rightfully take credit for many, many good things. However, we must at least be allowed to acknowledge the facts: religion, historically, has a dark side, and that it tends to come out whenever a religion amasses any significant quantity of political power.

People have asked why atheists have a problem with someone else's private beliefs. Unfortunately, however, religious belief is rarely content to keep itself private, and as long as it is in the public sphere, influencing our public policy, it should be subject to public scrutiny.

Thank you for reading, see you all in chapter 16.


	16. Magic Tricks!

Well gee, when I published chapter 15, I really had no idea it would be this long before the next chapter got posted. Sorry for the hiatus. During that time, I've contemplated this story and some of the reviews rather extensively. The most frequent issue raised in the reviews was that the story is hard to follow at times. Perhaps there are some edits I could make to the story (in fact, I probably will once this arc concludes), but that would require a re-write on my end, and a re-read on yours. So in the interest of sparing everyone from having to do that, let's just summarize the important events right now and get everyone up to speed (feel free to skip this if you want). This summary will include _all_ major plot points that have been explicitly revealed thus far (and some clarifying points for things that were a bit vague in the text), _in chronological order_. Please note that whenever "[because reasons]" appears, there _is_ a reason, but it's too complex and not important enough to warrant a full explanation. Anyway, here goes:

\- [Because reasons], the multitudinous versions of Earth are ruled by monsters, which have the ability to traverse the multiverse. They disappeared right around the time mammals (such as foxes and rabbits) gained sentience and sapience. _What a coincidence._

\- Agamemnon (A.K.A. "the omnipred" or "it") is one of the few to escape the purge. However, he does not escape unscathed, and is crippled by the very same fox who's head he hung on his wall. He is trapped within a higher dimensional "well" of sorts, and has been trying to escape the homeworlds of Agent Raymond and Nicky Edmus ever since.

\- Meanwhile, some mammals evolve the ability to traverse the multiverse unassisted, much like the omnipredators they replaced. After thousands of years of prolonged contact, most worlds are decent, civilized places, yet one stubbornly remains as depraved, warmongering, and hellish as ever.

\- Shortly before the turn of the 20th century, it is conclusively shown that machines can be built which will allow others to traverse the worlds...including the nasty, warmongering imperialists. To prevent exactly that from happening, the other worlds band together into a consortium, sort of like a federation of islanders who are working together to prevent the evil empire from inventing the canoe and steamrolling them all.

\- Shortly after the UNO Consortium (often abbreviated to "the consortium") is founded, a very peculiar snake meets an even more peculiar creature, who says all sorts of wacky-tacky hippie-dippy nonsense...

\- Consortium Agent Nicholas Raymond Wilde and convicted murderer Nicholas Edmus Wilde are both "counterparts" of Officer Nicholas Piberius Wilde. This means that Raymond, Nicky, and Officer Wilde are all alternate versions of each other, as is a very strange (and very rich) being who calls himself "Funtime". Funtime appears to be in charge of many things within the Consortium.

\- Like most "Zystopias", the homeworlds of Raymond and Nicky have some unfathomable evil at their cores. Remember Agamemnon? [Because reasons], the omnipred, like some sort of Stephen King villain, is planning on quite literally eating Raymond for breakfast on his 12th birthday, and has been tormenting him with nightmares of ovens in the same way that a spider bites its prey before it slurps up their innards.

\- On the eve of his taming party, Raymond and Nicky are faced with a choice: Run away and perish with near certainty, or stay and face a fate worse than death. Nicky knows that running away will get him killed, and so he stays. Raymond chooses to run for exactly the same reason, and therein lies all the difference in the worlds. Raymond, who for one night becomes the luckiest fox in the multiverse, meets another consortium agent, who takes pity on him, and smuggles him away to a much better place.

\- At some point in the late 1990's the Consortium (which had been expanding throughout the 20th century) comes into contact with a planet of mammal hating automatons. To fend off certain annihilation, a hastily written and overly restrictive treaty between the Consortium and Mechania is written and hurriedly signed by both parties.

\- [Because reasons] Georgina Sandminer is created as a highly experimental shapeshifting android. The "experiment" is deemed a failure, and Georgina flees to Consortium space, becoming a bit of a pariah on her homeworld in doing so.

\- Nicky is now a convicted murderer (although he truthfully insists that he's been framed), and is sentenced to death.

\- On the day of Nicky's execution, Raymond is sent to Nicky's homeworld to retrieve some ice cream. [Because neutrinos], this goes horribly wrong, and Raymond winds up in the execution chamber of the very same prison in which Nicky is being held.

\- Raymond grabs Nicky and bolts.

\- HEY! Remember that _really_ evil universe that the Consortium was founded to oppose? They obtained a metaphorical canoe and are now at war with the Consortium. This war consumes just about all of the available exotic matter needed to operate the multiverse-machines, stranding Raymond and Nicky in a dystopian hell with little hope of escape.

\- Agamemnon notices that Raymond has come back and resumes the hunt.

\- Raymond and Nicky somehow escape to a thing called a relay. It's the interdimensional equivalent of an airport, and the metaphorical flights are still grounded.

\- Agamemnon and his minions (did I mention he's a necromancer who creates undead Frankenstein-esque creatures as a hobby?) attack and "sink" the relay, leaving Raymond, Nicky, and everyone else _even more stranded_ than they already were, having jumped ship for a slightly less hostile universe nearby.

\- Remember that snake guy and his hippie friend? They're back. Oh, and Nicky has temporarily lost his mind. Something to do with the collars...

If I recall correctly, that's just about everything thus far. Surprisingly enough, little more than _24 hours_ of in-universe time separates the ending of chapter 1 and the events of chapter 15. In real life, chapter 1 was published well over _a year_ ago. And for you longtime readers, thanks for sticking around!

 ** _END OF SUMMARY_**

 ** _DISCLAIMER: this chapter contains some brief (non-smut) NSFW scenes. If you don't like beige prose one-off descriptions of kinky acts involving a machine used to test condoms and green paint, go find something else to read._**

* * *

"Nothing lasts forever. Eventually, we all collapse. Everything atrophies-this universe atrophies. No matter how strong your faith, someday, your god will die. It might be dead already, because we invented it, our society gave it value, and when we crumble, it crumbles with us. To some, the idea is morose, depressing, even. But to me, it's just our world, it's something worth noticing. Because our gods may be dead, but their bones are beautiful." -Evan Hadfield

* * *

"So, what's the verdict?" Asked the android fox.

The gilded hive queen read from her metaphorical clipboard. "Excepting the existence clause of the Pan-Reality Treaty of 2000, which is one of the most highly contested units of law on the books, anyway, she is de-facto innocent by our laws, and she ought to be sent back to wherever she came from."

Mechwilde retrieved the data on Judy's unexpected arrival to their world. "According to the data, she was sent here in close temporal proximity to many Consortium Agents under an invalid key, suggesting malfunction on their end."

"And where were they sent to?" She inquired.

"V-137."

"Then as she was lost in the mail, we will send her to the intended destination."

"Very well."

A relatively short amount of time later, Judy was standing atop a huge metal cone within an enormous cylindrical white room that was over 143 meters tall, an equally big cone dangling from the ceiling towards her. Of course, they were not _perfect_ cones: Both of them had numerous pipes and other bits of sci-fi looking machinery poking in and out of every meter of their surface, and the bottom cone was truncated to produce a roughly circular platform that measured 10 meters in diameter and was linked to the faraway wall by a lone grey catwalk. Many travelers never truly realized just how enormous a relay was, as most of them were hidden away in higher spatial dimensions for any number of reasons. This one, however, was entirely contained within the white cylinder, and was not concealed from anyone in any meaningful way.

And oddly enough, there _wasn't_ already a bigass spherical wormhole opening hovering over the platform.

Yes, you read that correctly. Wormhole apertures are _spheres_. Not circles. Wormholes are often described with metaphors of bending and folding a sheet of paper, punching a hole in it, and allowing an ant to go really far or whatever. Most people, however, are prone to 2-dimensional thinking, and don't really bother to extrapolate one dimension higher. See, a 3d wormhole bridging a 2d world on the paper will form a 2d circle. If two rigid, solid circles are confined to the same flat plane, then they can only contact at exactly one point, with every other point on the edge, and every point within each circle, unaffected and literally untouched. It is only by pinching them together in 3d that every single point in one circle will be touch a corresponding point in the other, Even if two objects touching each other like this makes no sense to the flatlanders or to us 3d people, the same logic applies in higher dimensions. A 4d wormhole bridging 3d space will bring two volumes of space together, which will produce a wormhole aperture in the shape of a 3d circle (in other words, a sphere).

The platform began to buzz as three metal arms descended from the upper cone. Each one was tipped with the very same sort of lümnus crystals that were found at the core of every M-drive, said crystals and their arms now rotating around the platform as the room was filled with a dull roar of overclocked machinery. A thin bolt of lightning materialized at the center of the platform, arcing and snapping upwards without any sort of grace as it ran into the upper cone. The room was instantly filled with the existential musings of the klaxon alarms, which, like everything else they tried to say, came out as a harsh buzzing sound, its original meaning and nuance lost upon the rabbit who was now covering her earholes.

The lightning stopped, and the machine began to shut down.

"Insufficient antimass." Said MechWilde. "How odd."

"Come on back, Judy." Douglass docked to the nearest data exchange port and had directions to plan B in seconds. "We'll have to try something else." He said as the bulkhead door opened, connecting the catwalk with the control room.

Many minutes later, they were once again approaching one of the many gaping holes into the void beneath the city. Considering how dangerous relays could be, they'd built theirs far, _far_ away from the rest of the city, and as a result it was almost 6 minutes there by elevator car. The little transparent cabin came to a stop, precariously perched atop the superconducting rail over the seemingly bottomless chasm that lead to the depths of the ancient city of machines.

The very sight of it filled Officer Hopps with dread. Then again, she knew what was down there.

For the second time that day, her elevator abruptly plunged into the darkness, this time taking her to her exile, rather than to her death.

The trip to this section of the archives was oddly short, the elevator coming to a stop at one of many "stalls" in a fairly well-used station situated within a great concrete cigarette. Now deep in the basement of the city, Judy, lead by Jerome, went through one of the _many_ exits doors and began wandering the halls of a centuries old storage facility as the white rabbit automaton led them to plan B. They came across a sheet-metal door that wouldn't have looked out of place on somebody's garage, and Jerome opened it with the push of a glowing red button. To Judy's untrained eye, the model 1917 M-drive that was revealed in the cell looked almost exactly like the one the ZBAI people had been experimenting on back at BunnyBurrow. It smelled like a nursing home, and was covered in a half-decade of the ultrafine dust that this lifeless place tended to accumulate. It was here on loan from the Consortium, mostly to aid the local engineers work out the principles of constructing the relay they had just visited.

"Sweet cheese and crackers, how old is this thing?"

"It's a Wanderer's Company Model Epsilon-1917. This unit's 100 years old!"

"And it still _works?_ " Judy was in awe.

Douglass chucked, his horns glowing a soft black-body orange. "I'll have _you_ know that I was built in _1682_."

"As were my feet." MechWilde chirped. "Infinitely serviceable parts for indefinite operation has been the predominant design philosophy here for a literal age. You may not believe this, but well over half of the androids that were operating during The Revolution are still going now.

Judy's jaw was practically on the floor. The rest of her face had no idea what to do with this strange new sense of awe, and so it gave up and basically did nothing but randomly twitch for a few seconds.

"Fortunately for us-" Jerome broke the ice as he walked over to the M-drive's control panel "this machine's all in one piece. _Theoretically_ , we just input the startup sequence and send you off..."

Within the great glass bulb there was a spark, which fizzled and popped and spun about until it formed a stable pale pink glowing haze in the center. With the turn of a key and the flip of a switch, the machine came online with the tremendous roar of a diesel engine stolen from a Zeppelin as an auxiliary truss deployed from the main chassis of the device.

Mechwilde eased the throttle to 80% (this older version was designed for two operators, whether or not they were androids) as the whole room began to shake.

"Coordinates programmed...preparing to open."

"Good luck, Godspeed, and whatever you do, _please don't come back!_ " Said Douglass.

And then the portal was open, the wormhole dangling from the auxiliary truss, rather than sending the whole contraption elsewhere. No explosions, no disasters, no ramming into relays and nearly annihilating your planet, no fuss; just as one expects from a competent operator.

Feldman and his goons were idiots. They were also dead. This was not a coincidence.

Judy ran into the portal, blinded by the light. She once again tumbled, twisted, turned, and plunged through the multiverse, glimpsing her counterparts much like Officer Josh Borksalot before her.

To her horror, far too many of them were fucking the fox, Officer Hopps of V-294 powerless to ignore the orgasmic moans of countless alternate versions of herself as each and every single one of them fucked themselves silly in increasingly elaborate set-ups that were as kinky as they were ridiculous. One particularly noteworthy case involved Judy giving anal to Finnick with one of those machines they use to test for leaking condoms while The foxxy husbando himself struggled in vain to collect the resulting fluid(s) in a bucket of green paint.

And that's before we get into what Gideon Grey was doing there _..._ or why he was feeding the green paint cocktail to an eldritch abomination with a pronounced umlaut fetish.

In short, the whole goddamn wormhole smelled like cum, and Officer Hopps of V-294, ever the uptight puritan, was thoroughly disgusted and utterly flabbergasted by the sight of it.

And then the interspecies debauchery was over, replaced by a vista of relatively wholesome trees and the unmistakable stench of caramel. She briefly wandered through the woods of Nottingham, and suddenly came upon a summer fair in a clearing.

"Oh hey!" Said the blacksmith, a barenecked, lovable and slightly overweight fox who looked alarmingly similar to the school bully (although in Judy's mind, the first adjective more or less nullified everything else). "The show in there just started!"

"Are...are you _Gideon Grey?_ "

"Yessiree, best blacksmith in the whole British Empire...who's asking?" Gideon suddenly seemed quite serious.

* * *

Some time in the near future...

Raymond's headless corpse sat in the morgue, dead as a fucking doornail as it bled in the darkness. It hadn't quite cooled to the sub-zero temperatures of the rest of the chamber, although the stainless steel table atop which it rested was trying as hard as it could to suck every last joule of what had once been life from the body. It was interrupted, however, as the whole assembly slid out and came to a sudden stop, while a technician prepared for disposal. The body tumbled quite disgracefully into a cart full of spent parts, used gloves, discarded ECM supports, defective organs, and soured bandages, spattering what little blood remained within it onto the rest of the cart's contents like dressing on a demented salad. The cart, Raymond's corpse prominently on display atop the pile of flesh, wheeled over to the adjacent room doorway.

"Wait" said a not-literally faceless technician holding a clipboard. "Says here not to melt that one."

"Dammit." Said her companion, both dressed in white scrubs and facemasks.

She returned the cart to cryostorage locker, both of them audibly grunting as they heaved the corpse back into its ice cold casket. This was no small feat, considering that Raymond's body, even missing the head, was still taller than either of them (but not by much).

Having dealt with this latest annoyance, the technician wheeled the cart back towards and then through the doorway into the adjacent room. This room was even stranger than the last, and the two of them combined might fool an untrained observer into concluding they were on some sort of spacecraft. The Cryostorage room was a honeycomb bookshelf of circular bulkheads crisscrossed by all sorts of tubes of varying diameters and frost buildup, and the "smelter" wasn't much of an improvement. From the door, one could access an elevated catwalk that went straight to the mouth of a 6 meter funnel which drained into a cavernous steel tank full of some sort of foul yellow fluid that was far more dangerous than it seemed. It was the first step in the biowaste recycling process, and it was therefore full of digestive enzymes, and clocked a 2.91 on the pH scale. In other words, if you dipped your feet into it for a few minutes, there wouldn't be much left for you to pull out afterwards.

Meanwhile, at the end of the walkway and right net to the funnel, there was a control panel, and a set of large metal claws in which to grip the cart, the whole apparatus placed precariously close to the funnel. Once, an intern had fallen in. fortunately, the engineers had been smart enough to install a big grey bulkhead door at the base of the funnel back when the rest of this place was being built in the 60's, although it still scared the hell out of the poor sucker (and made for the greatest "I told you so" of Doug Rattman's career).

The technician loaded the cart into the hazard-tape marked zone between the claws, and began busying herself at the controls. The claws gripped the cart, the bulkhead slid open with a groan, and much like a garbage truck, the cart's contents were unceremoniously dumped into the funnel, sliding down the chute into acidic oblivion below. Within the hour, just about everything in the cart would be completely dissolved in the tank. Sometime later, the resulting sludge would be piped elsewhere, and other far stranger things would be done to it.

The bulkhead closed, the technician retrieved the cart, and went on with the rest of her day.

* * *

"It has been conjectured that there exists for each religion extant in the year 1412, exactly one universe where that specific religion is actually true: I.E. for each version of god postulated, there exists a world in which that god is real. It was the discovery of V-327 that forced philosophy departments to take this conjecture seriously, although recently declassified research suggests that there is one very glaring counterexample to the conjecture." -The Wanderer on God

On one hand, the sheer horror of the landscape somehow managed to shock him.

On the other hand, he really should have seen this particular horror coming. Multiple probes, including a triplet of aerial drones that were monitoring this latest experiment, had sent back photographs of the surface of this world. Then again, much like any one of the multitudinous Grand Canyons, it was far more spectacular (or horrible) in person.

It had all started sometime in the year [REDACTED], when a probe sent to V-327 had been destroyed moments after landing there. 2 more had been sent, and 2 more had met a similar end.

Roughly 7 months later, a pair of agents had mysteriously and inexplicably perished of [DATA EXPUNGED] after returning from an excursion to V-331

And then others began to drop dead, bearing all sorts of ridiculous ailments.

By the time Nicholas Randall Puxatony Derek "Funtime" Wilde had convinced the other O5's to look into the matter, 22 had died in what was beginning to look like an epidemic.

The cause of what was now a minor outbreak had been isolated, and with any luck, the SCP foundation was about to nip it in the bud. Once upon a time, philosophy departments across the Consortium had comfortably asserted that the interventionist god of classical theism was a null hypothesis at best; Unfalsifiable and arguably impossible, his existence thoroughly discredited by logical paradoxes and scientific progress...That is, until they'd found a counterexample.

A wise man by the name of Alan Watts had once said that our logic, while frequently being confused with the real worlds, was far too simple and crude to accurately describe it, leading to such errors. And time and time again, be it particle-wave duality, relativistic singularities, Sir Darwin's theories of speciation and evolution, or even the backwards causality demonstrated by the delayed choice quantum eraser experiments, he had been vindicated. People had tried to put reality in a box countless times throughout history, and reality went to all the trouble of breaking each and every last one of them, _without fail,_ as if it enjoyed proving people wrong.

Or, as Raymond liked to say, "the multiverse is bigger than your delusions," and, perhaps, one's theology. It was for this reason that the god question could no longer be honestly answered with a yes or a no, instead requiring an array of percentages stored as 32-bit floats.

Of course, there was no such thing as a free existential lunch. The gods and demons couldn't just tick the bits of reality in their favor and get away with it. As they existed in _a_ real world, they were therefore subject to it and the cosmic machine all the same. On this note, it had been found that, if the supernatural could exist, and such entities could indeed "bleed" across dimensions into otherwise secular worlds, then be it gods, ghosts, ghouls, or necromancers, they could surely be killed, or at least _exterminated_.

 _This_ is what Funtime and the other O5's had set out to do, and with any luck, they'd succeed.

Although Funtime was _technically_ one of Raymond's counterparts, you could be forgiven for missing it. For one thing, Funtime, having been born in the late 50's, was old enough to be Raymond's grandfather. Of course, some amount of temporal blurring was to be expected across the spectrum of one's counterparts, but it almost never went _that_ far. He'd been spotted by a Consortium scout running a primitive (and relatively successful) version of Wild Times as a teenager, not even 6 months after his homeworld had enacted its version of the Harmony Act. They'd offered him a ticket, he'd accepted, and over 40 years later, his partially dismantled brain was sitting in the core of an immense mainframe, looking out at the world from many sets of eyes as it gazing upon this body in the third person from 3 angles at once.

For Funtime, you see, was not only a member of the O5 council and one of the Consortium's "high brass", he was also an apprentice hivemind who was undergoing assimilation, and he currently owned 12 bodies that looked nothing at all like the singular Nicholas Derek Wilde he had once been. His parents had died penniless, and he was well on track to living forever. One of his puppets, a generic canine form with twin Dalek-horns in place of the ears, was clutching a minimalistic silver pocketwatch in its left hand while fiddling with the CTRL panel of the G-Bomb with its right. Like all of Funtime's corpses, its left eye was a chrome plated sphere punctuated by a ruby iris that visibly glowed at all times.

The G-Bomb itself was a rather strange object, composed of an osmium-plated 55-gallon drum with twin superconducting conduits feeding into it from a 500 pound aluminum sphere that contained a cup of "Oh God no!" extracted from SCP-294 by Dr. [INSUFFICIENT SECURITY CLEARANCE], and a far more conventional car battery that fed into the barrel through twin metallic hydrogen jumper cables. On one hand, Funtime considered signing the pan-reality treaty to be his greatest mistake on the board of directors, although it did grant the Consortium access to large quantities of room-temperture superconductors, which was nice. Speaking of electricity, large power transfer ports covered almost every visible surface of the G-bomb, and welded to the side of the barrel was an enormous panel of toggle switches and LED's that centered around a pair of big glowing red buttons, one marked "Plan A" the other "Plan B".

The science team were hopeful for plan A. Whatever the hell the anomaly of V-327 actually was, they wanted to study it _and_ its monster in detail.

The other high-brass would've preferred plan B. Whatever the hell had killed those agents, the Consortium wanted it dead.

If Funtime was lucky, he figured he'd get to push both.

His puppet body stood at the controls, it and the G-bomb having been spawned at the summit of mount Sinai, overlooking a bloodstained desert punctuated by grotesque stone spikes that protruded from the coarse sands like a forest. Hanging over low in the sky over this desert was the shimmering mirage of a tired orange sun that had not been allowed to set for 20 years.

And of course it hadn't, for there was a war going on down there: The armies of Yahweh vs a never ending legion of iron chariots. Speaking of which...

"Well what do you know, he _did_ show up."

Funtime was joined atop the mountain by a disheveled old man with long white hair that ran well past his shoulders. But the good Lord's eyes did not glow at all: They were dark, cavernous voids, completely and utterly lacking in any sort of substance or structure, even going so far as to omit the pupils. They were the blackest things Funtime had ever seen.

The old man's hideously pale face was so absolutely contorted by seething rage and vanity that it was practically an eldritch abomination in it of itself, a legion of tar-pitch tentacles writhing forth from his eyes and lunging for Funtime's neck. His puppet was pinned to the dirt in an instant as the good Lord unhinged and split his jaw like a demented snake, revealing row after row of razor sharp needleteeth that went all the way down to his shoulders, his "mouth" now a twisted sort of flower that was over 66 centimeters in diameter.

Of course, the O5 council wasn't stupid enough to neglect such a contingency, and to this end, they'd installed twin remote detonators within the G-bomb, which Funtime, his brain still safe halfway across the multiverse, was arming. Still, he was mildly disappointed that he had to use the command line, rather than actually pushing a button. Pushing buttons was way more fun!

 _Set G-Bomb to Mode A. Activate._

The view from the eyes of his puppet (which was currently being torn to pieces by the old man) began to shake, erupting in a blinding explosion of white as it saturated every last cell in Funtime's retinas, as his near mortally wounded flesh began to shut down, he could vaguely make out the deafening roar of the doomed god struggling against the white-hot brimstone chains as they dragged him into the void of the containment chamber.

And then the noise ceased, only to be replaced by the cacophony of a war waged within the bomb. Even now, it was still fighting like hell from inside its prison.

 **Primary containment integrity at 77%.**

 _Set to mode B. Activate._

The bomb was screaming and rattling like a hypothetical Nicky strapped to the electric chair, the Earth responding in a manner not at all dissimilar to the agonized spasms of a dying man. In the skies above, the sun went black, the stars began to panic, and a great thunderstorm, the likes of which this world had never seen, gripped the entire planet in its fury as the very dirt beneath the feet of the warlords howled in pain.

And among the panicking stars and collapsing firmament, a mobile containment and termination facility, itself a giant sphere a half-mile in diameter fashioned from a graphene skin 92 meters thick, had warped into orbit. Somewhere within the 12 dimensional void, dozens of scientists, the infamous Dr. Bright included, were scrambling to stabilize the containment field after its brief interdimensional jaunt. The field itself was manifesting as a ghostly blue luminescence within the center of the sphere, The innermost containment chamber itself a scaled up (and far more powerful) version of the G-bomb.

 **Secondary containment integrity at 100%. Primary containment integrity at 61%.**

 _Begin Phase II. Transmat the bomb._

The G-bomb vanished from mount Sinai just as it had appeared not even 5 minutes prior. Less than a 10th of a second later, the device and its prisoner rematerialized within the containment sphere. But the lord would not go down without a proper beating, and to this end dozens of inch thick metallic hydrogen wires were now plugging into every inch of the device, as they prepared to deliver the final blow.

 **Transmat success!** **Primary containment vessel connection established.** **Primary containment breach imminent.**

 _Begin Phase III._

Elsewhere in the multiverse, in the skies of a world christened Gedvín, the power beams from a budding Dyson swarm were beginning to fade, ever so slightly. Not because the star was shutting down, no: The power was being redirected, Terawatts at a time, back into the graphene sphere and straight into the nested G-bombs.

Meanwhile, every sentient being on the planet below passed out in shock from the incalculable trauma of the murder of a god.

 _Experiment conclusive._

 _Congratulations!_

Some amount of time later, at a mysterious warehouse in an undisclosed location, Jack Savage (who at this point was merely a stereotypical broke teenager) was wheeling the corpse through a hallway, until he came upon the door to a very strange surgical theatre. Judging by the jar full of googly eyes, the old bottle of tacky glue, and the constantly burning heat lamp, the operating room was evidently better suited for the fabrication of smelly souvenir knicknacks than medicine.

"Here you go, Mr. Funtime."

A few drops of blood from the corpse of God spilled onto the pristine linoleum floor.

"Clean that up, and get out." Said Funtime over the intercom, as one of his giggling puppets donned a 19th century diving helmet.

* * *

Sometime very early in the morning on the 3rd of June, 2017.

The relay station, V-294.

"Your collars, please?"

Raymond once again released the latch on Nicky's collar, removing the small metal clip as he did so, before liberating himself from the grip of his own black demon in a similar manner.

He placed the pair of clips (both now thoroughly discolored by electric arcing) back into his lockpicking kit, and carefully deposited both collars in a pale yellow hazmat bin as if they were badly cracked mason jars full of highly unstable nitroglycerin that could explode at any moment if he so much as looked at it wrong. Although lockpicks and clips were ubiquitous among Consortium agents, the collars they disarmed were one among a handful of contraband items and substances that the Consortium had blacklisted, largely on account of how dangerous (or otherwise evil) they were.

Some Zystopias played the collars straight, believing them to _actually_ keep "savages" in line, no ulterior conspiracies to be seen...however there were others, knowing their _real_ purpose, who took them several steps further. Such steps often included a small plastic syringe that would inject nighthowler serum and drive a predator savage at the push of a button (largely for fear-mongering and propaganda purposes). Until it was discharged, neutralized, or otherwise decommissioned and dismantled, such a collar (particularly a malfunctioning unit, as they were usually designed to be fail-dangerous instead of fail-safe), was arguably as dangerous as a loaded grenade launcher: The capacitors easily held enough juice to kill smaller mammals, the whole device was designed to seriously injure anybody who tried to modify them, they reliably induced severe psychological damage to their victims through normal operation, and some of the "stinging" collars contained enough nighthowler concentrate to poison the water supply of a small town.

In other words, Raymond was happy to get rid of them, to relieve the itching and once again feel the breeze flowing past his neck.

Meanwhile, in the bowels of the relay, an android zebra with 6-fingered magneto-hands was idly (and quite literally) rolling through the cargo hold on his column. He came across a slightly yellowed white console with a jet-black glass screen and a polished chromium PRGM exchange port, which he began interfacing with almost immediately.

REQUESTING ACCESS TO CARGO LOGS;

==ENTER CREDENTIALS:==

nYOHANNES id0x5F3759DF pTwoPointOneShoes

==ACCESS GRANTED==

REQUESTING CO-ORDINATES OF ITEMS #27T83499, #89AK3R7H;

==ITEM #27T83499 at (55.845,183.84), ITEM #89AK3R7H at (20.179,6.941)==

DISCONNECT;

Disjointedly swiveling to the right, the android rolled through the shelves, scanning numbers and computing directions as it came upon the first item of interest: A hexapod automaton mobility enhancer, folded up into something approximating a cube. Yohannes the mechanical zebra was well aware of the impending evacuation, and of the necessity of abandoning his column for a more versatile (albeit less elegant) transport mechanism. He placed the unit onto the flatbed cart, and moved on to his next item. Yohannes was chief of logistics aboard this particular relay, and had readily deduced _where_ they'd be evacuating to, along with the alarmingly primitive state of V-137's technology. Excepting a lone thorium breeder reactor secretly owned and operated by the esteemed blacksmith Gideon Grey, and a pair of 50 year old photovoltaic cells which powered the consortium hostel, there was no electricity whatsoever to be had there, and Yohannes was also aware, as chief of logistics, that the aforementioned blacksmith's reactor was running on metaphorical fumes, and that whatever fissile material was left would soon be depleted.

Fortunately, he was due to receive a fresh thorium shipment, which had arrived hours ago, and was currently sitting in an immensely heavy ruggedized yellow briefcase. Lamenting the immense confusion and delay caused by recent events and the ensuing antimass shortage, Yohannes loaded the case onto his cart, and continued on his way. The Fat Controller (and everyone else) would certainly have quite a few words in store for whoever was responsible for this, and the logistics android was awfully glad it wasn't him.

* * *

Sometime before noon, Saturday, June 3rd, 2017.

Nicky and his cell were both a mess. He was also one of the few mammals onsite who wasn't bored halfway to death, although to be fair, the internal Hell that Nicky was going through wasn't exactly an improvement. His symptoms were like the bastard child of PTSD and extreme bipolar disorder, abandoned on the streets and raised by repressed teenage angst cranked up to 11: Flashbacks, delusions, sporadic inability to distinguish reality from fiction, debilitating neurotransmitter imbalances, sporadic loss of higher cognitive functions and rational thought, occasional involuntary muscle spasms, etc.

His mood swings were violent, as were his fists, which had pounded several dents into the wall paneling. The fur on his face was matted down by never ending rivulets of tears, sometimes of joy, other times from incalculable agonies. He'd lost his voice some time ago, his mouth parted in a now truncated scream, as his body convulsed against the restraints.

And as Nicky, like roughly 31% of the predators who went through this process, had began displaying suicidal tendencies about 52 minutes after his detainment began, they'd had to get out the ropes.

"If it weren't for that stupid fucking war, we could get this poor soul to an actual hospital." Said Agent Gates, a grumpy old doe who had, until now, been the chief medical officer of the now sunken relay. "This shit is damn near barbaric."

As for the others, they were loitering around in the barn and in the shade of the trees outside, on a mostly clear early summer day. It was 11:00 or so, and they had nothing really to do.

The relay had been defended, the antimass leaks had been plugged, and the exotic matter itself had been sent off to a 7th dimensional auxiliary safe, where it would slowly leech away into the void. If push came to shove, it would all annihilate into nothingness within a month, returned to the cosmic bank from which the Consortium had borrowed it.

There it would be safe. There it wouldn't a liability. There it wouldn't be literally erasing the world after being released by some meddling dickless bureaucrat from the EPA who didn't know what they were doing

Let's just say Agent Feldman had gotten extremely lucky when his "experiment" had _only_ leveled a few blocks of BunnyBurrow.

At least there was still enough of a town left to react to the explosion.

At least there was still an inhabitable biosphere in which the town could exist.

At least there was still a planet, with a moon, on which said biosphere could operate.

For the record, antimass is _not_ antimatter. The latter is readily formed in utterly minuscule quantities during certain instances of proton rich radioisotopes undergoing beta decay. Anti particles have the same masses as their ordinary counterparts, and only differ in their charges. Upon contact with ordinary matter, they annihilate, releasing a hell of a lot of energy in the process.

Neither of the previous two sentences describe antimass truthfully. Antimass happens whenever 3 people get off a bus that had previously been carrying two people, and unlike antimatter, which is its own (mostly stable) stuff with its own energy, antimass represents a temporary and very egregious violation of the conservation of mass-energy, and, upon contact with mass, it does not annihilate.

It _cancels_.

No bang, no boom, no nothing. In this fashion, an entire planet could simply _vanish_ if you threw enough of the stuff at it, and there was more than enough of it contained in the now sunken relay to permanently fuck up Earth #294. And we're not talking about destroying the ozone layer, or sterilizing the biosphere, or setting the entire antarctic continent on fire, or even slipping a black hole the size of a coin into someone's pocket when nobody's looking. No, we're talking about enough antimass to properly _erase_ V-294, as in, it's there one moment, and _gone_ in the next.

And as it had been locked away, on a ship that was now sunk, its former crewmammals had nothing left to do but kill time and wait to be rescued. The torching of _**N**_ would be over soon enough, and eventually, somebody, somewhere, would note that something had somehow gone horribly wrong, and from there, somebody else, somewhere else, would eventually, in someway, do something about it.

At worst, they'd be spending a few days here, and on that note, they'd sent a pair of agents into town to procure supplies.

Jason and Raymond, joined by a few others, were still at their table, playing cards. At this moment their game was sidetracked by Agents Milford and Milton, clad in medieval garb and carrying burlap sacs full of provisions: whiskey, baguettes, etc. A slightly beige folded flyer had been stuffed into Milton's breast pocket.

" 'Ello boys! We're back!"

"With food!"

"So we don't gotta' eat Raymond's crayfish?"

Agent Barnabus, like Nicky, had an aversion to the crayfish, although his aversion stemmed from an entirely different source: Nicky had never eaten meat which _wasn't_ from bugs that had been mashed to paste, and found the writhing crustaceans repulsive. Barnabus, however, was a systems engineer, and had grown accustomed to the sythflesh cubes and the process by which they were manufactured: mass-produced extracellular matrices that were seeded from a genetically engineered immortal cell line with a scrambled genome that belonged to no species in particular, they were entirely artificial, having never breathed a day in their lives, and Barnabus was squeamish (to say the least) about actually eating a _corpse_. As for the sythflesh cubes, Barnabus viewed them like he viewed a fruit: a nonsentient cluster of cells that were grown and subsequently consumed. One was perhaps a bit more protein rich than the other, but the ethics community had decided that this detail was irrelevant.

" _HEY!_ " Raymond was mildly offended at the remark about his crayfish. After escaping the hopelessly bland food of V-293, He'd studied cooking as a hobby, and considered himself decent at a stove, although just about anything beat the grey paste and kibble they'd fed him as a kid, or the constipation it sometimes caused.

"Oh I'll still have one." Jason, an imgurrie who'd once sailed on fishing boats as a teenager to make ends meet, _loved_ the taste of crustacean. He and Raymond also had an affinity for small boats, jetskis, and generally dicking around in salty water, which was perhaps one of the few things Raymond enjoyed as much as he did sodomy.

"Also, look what we found!" Milford exclaimed.

Agent Milton removed the flyer from his pocket, and displayed it to the group.

"Annual Nottingham Summer Festival, featuring a performance from Reynard the travelling wizard at high noon on Saturday, June the 3rd."

"And What is today's date?" Milton asked, already knowing the answer.

"Why it is June the 3rd, good sir."

"And what is the time?"

"Dare I say we've got an hour before the show!"

"Hold on-" Bo McKinnon, a slightly tubby Panda who'd been the former "Captain" of Relay-294, was intrigued. Although there wasn't any reason to make him the leader (and there wasn't much left to be in charge of at this point), he nevertheless emerged as the _de-facto_ leader.

"-are you suggesting we go see a _magic show?_ "

"Oh no!" Snapped Milford, with a slight touch of sarcasm. "This is the real deal! _Or so they say._ "

"Yes indeed they do say so." replied Milton.

"Are you implying that we'll actually witness a supernatural event at the show?" Captain McKinnon was as staunch a metaphysical naturalist as the androids. Raymond himself, while firmly an atheist and a skeptic, remained open to the possibility, if only because there was some _really crazy shit_ out there in the multiverse, and because he knew a guy who had once interned for the SCP foundation, said friend having told all sorts of tall tales about mopping up the metaphorical and sometimes literal blood of gods and demons alike.

"Well it says there's a show, and the townsfolk wouldn't stop talking about it!" Milford responded. "Hell, half of them were helping to set it up. They've got booths and tents and everything!"

"Is it a fraud, or will there be magic?"

"There will be a show."

"You're dodging the question-"

"I say we go see it." Raymond, unlike his angsty counterpart, was bored. Magic or not, such shows were often impressive. Once, he'd seen a man _assemble_ his assistant right there, on stage, the inanimate mannequin suddenly coming to life in broad stage light!

Raymond loved magic shows, even if he knew _for a fact_ that they were fake.

"Anyone else got a better idea?"

Nobody bothered to answer Raymond's question.

"I guess that settles it." Said McKinnon, as he and Raymond ambled back to the barn to retrieve costumes. _What?_ You didn't expect them to just waltz into medieval England in modern clothing, did you? _That would be silly_.

Meanwhile, half the multiverse away in a dark, cold, and not even remotely dank basement (the owner prided herself on never exceeding 3% humidity), there was a mainframe. " _But wait!_ " You might say: " _Aren't mainframes those ghastly prehistoric tape-deck things that run those unmaintainable COBOL spaghetti code abominations I hear about in the news?"_ While it's true that _some_ mainframes are exactly this, the term itself is not defined along those lines. Just about any computer you've used is Turing complete, which means that _in theory_ it can solve any computational problem that any other Turing complete machine can solve. This means that if given an infinite amount of time and memory, you could render all the necessary VFX for James Cameron's _Avatar_ on a SNES. However, in the real world, where both time and memory are finite, some computers are much more powerful than others, which is why movies are rendered on supercomputers instead of a 16-bit game console. Much like how a supercomputer is designed to crunch many numbers at the same time, and is therefore better for rendering CGI in movies, a mainframe is designed to accept an enormous throughput of data from many inputs and to many outputs all at once, while also being redundant and reliable to the point where it almost never goes offline. Or, in layman's terms: If it's a thing on the internet that many people download from or upload to (especially if it's an important thing), chances are it's a mainframe or a server. For example, this particular mainframe, sitting in a basement half a multiverse away, handled E-mail, and at this exact instant, it received a message and promptly filed it into Raymond's inbox, all done in the blink of an eye. It was a short message, little more than a few kilobytes of Unicode plaintext and a hyperlink.

Assuming Raymond survived long enough to read it, he'd shit bricks and piss cement.

Right now, however, he was giddy for an entirely different reason: he was going to see a magic show, _in costume_ , which was always fun...Even if he did have to play the role of "filthy illiterate peasant".

* * *

Sometime in the mid 1990's, on a world that had yet to be categorized by the Consortium.

At the peak of the highest tower in the city of shards, the newly appointed hive queen sat upon her throne, the minimalistic obsidian seat surrounded by 200 year old bureaucratic processing cabinets, themselves dressed in billowing waves of liquid nitrogen fog. Within each of the monolithic computing modules, octuple compilers had been busying themselves integrating The Queen into the network. Entailing multiple instances of complete ego dissolution, source code modification, and subsequent ego reconstitution, it was hard to say the least. In mammalian terms, it would be like taking apart a right handed person's brain, one neuron at a time, rewiring the thing to be left handed, and putting it all back together, _without killing the person_.

No wait, it's even harder than that.

Nevertheless, they'd done it, and now The Queen was nearing completion. Soon she'd come online, and begin doing hive queen things. Of course, we're talking _computer time_ , which is to normal time like normal time is to dog years, and when you're plugged into enough silicon to crank out 150 petaFLOPS (which the queen was), the whole process was over in seconds.

Speaking of which, the Hive Queen was now online, and so the latest wave of petitions and proposals began to flood her E-mail servers. One of these proposals originated from a very strange RnD group, and came attached with preliminary designs and multiple research papers (in unformatted plaintext, of course) that detailed exactly what it was that they were proposing to build, and why any of them thought shapeshifting hyper-realistic "mammalian" androids were a good idea.

The Queen read the abstracts, and was sufficiently enticed to read the papers and the blueprints. She then consulted with her cabinet, each member then more or less doing exactly what she had done. They discussed the proposal, ratified a few changes to be made, and dispatched the approval for the J9 project. Within the minute, raw materials had been allocated (before contact with the Consortium and its asteroid mining fleet, they were surprisingly scarce) and factory space had been assigned. Soon thereafter, the engineers got to work.

The year was now 1999, and the world of Mechania would be contacted by the Consortium in several months time. Meanwhile, deep in the bowels of one of the industrial zones, a pair of technical droids were standing like sentinels over an array of parts and half-complete subsystems on a table. The chassis of Georgina Sandminer had already been constructed, and currently hung from a hook, dormant, silent, and unoffensive.

Georgina herself would one day go on to be the exact opposite.

Meanwhile, her "sister" by the name of Minerva Jones was still in pieces and was being assembled by the technicians. At this exact moment in time, they were tightening the screws that would eventually keep her head from falling off her neck, although neither the head nor the neck looked anything like the head or neck of the mammals she would one day be trained to imitate.

Sitting on a nearby shelf was a partially completed "skull" and a pair of optical sensors that would eventually get incorporated into the chassis of another member of the J9 class. The optical sensors were coincidentally angled in such a way as to be "viewing" the interior of the sparse, dark, grey room, assemble theater and all. The android they'd one day belong to has yet to be named in the story, and much like Georgina, he too would one day flee to the Consortium shortly after the Pan Reality Treaty was signed. He too would get a job as an agent, although his mission would become drastically different from his sister.

Minerva would never make it that far.

For now, she was in pieces, Georgina was a shiny new skeleton in a a closet, and Future Consortium Espionage Specialist Barnabus Adams was little more than a list of parts in bins. All were at peace, still mired in the eternal void that precedes life.

This would not last.

* * *

Sometime between 4 and 5 in the morning, V-294

Alejandro the android panther, having received the status update, was on the side of a backroad, returning to the relay, when he heard the revving engine behind him. Moments later, he had identified the source as a ZPD cruiser, and immediately began contemplating his options.

Perhaps it would be most prudent to surrender?

No. There was only one car, and Alejandro only counted 2 officers. He'd certainly faced worse, and considering his prowess with the Kalashnikov, he figured there was a nontrivial chance he'd walk away unscathed.

Alejandro preferred Kalashnikov to miniguns: fewer joules expended to carry one, and the ammo was much easier to find.

To the mechanical cat's surprise, the cruiser seemed to be ignoring him, as if it were in a hurry to be somewhere, and was not at all concerned with the bareneck panther running amok. Alejandro dismissed this contingency, yet the car's continued acceleration forced it upon his circuits once more. Perhaps it really did have more pressing matters to attend to.

Perhaps it was beelining for the relay.

Alejandro, computing odds well in excess of 20% for this last possibility, raised his gun, training it on the driver. Wherever this car (if driven by rational agent) was going, it was trouble, which he could either deal with now, or leave for someone else later.

And then the car swerved, plowing into his body at 60 MPH, overloading almost all of his sensors in an instant as his body began to report back.

==INTERNAL VOLTAGE FLUCTUATING 138% NORMAL BOUNDS==

"This is M-class Alejandro-"

==SIGNIFICANT COMPONENT DAMAGE DETECTED==

"-I have been struck by a car-"

==BATTERIES #1,3 SEVERELY DAMAGED, VOLTAGE APPROACHING CRITICAL LOW==

"-my batteries are compromised."

The last thing he thought he'd see was the face of the rabbit, her eyes practically glowing red.

==EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN INITIATED. DUMPING RAM TO DISK.==

He did not know where he was, how long he'd been out, or why.

==BATTERIES COMPROMISED==

==VOLTAGE STABLE, 3% ABOVE RATING==

==SEVERE DAMAGE TO CHASSIS DETECTED==

==MULTIPLE HARDWARES MISSING OR NONRESPONDING==

==LOADING QUICKSAVE...==

==Watch reads 2 hours 12 minutes ~53.72399 seconds==

(like all consortium androids, he'd been fitted with a mechanical watch that began ticking down the moment an emergency shutdown occurred.)

 _So I was hit by a car...have the others escaped?_

His right eye was completely nonfunctional, and the lenses in his left were cracked. Yet through this all, he still made out the puke-yellow of the hazmat suit that stood before him. He tried to move, but his tachometers reported no motion. Less than 31 milliseconds later, he'd readily deduced that he had been restrained, and turned his CPU time to processing the fragmented, distorted image he was now seeing. Slightly less than a second later, Alejandro had worked out that the thing standing before him was a sort of Frankenstein thing, a vaguely hyena shaped form that seemed to be cobbled together from 20 different people. In its left hand, Jebediah held a clipboard.

"Sir, it's running." He could barely make out.

"Begin the tests" Said the apprentice necromancer, his order launching a tidal wave of mental assault as a pair of supercomputers attempted to suck Alejandro dry of all his secrets. Amidst the screaming of the foreign hardware, Alejandro, who realized that there was little else to be done, resorted to the encryptor.

A handful of kilobytes of x86 machine code was loaded from Alejandro's drive into RAM, a handful of kilobytes that, upon execution, encrypted the entirety of the mechanical panther's memory bank. This included the operating system, the hardware drivers, and even the boot sectors of the disk.

Then it set every single bit of non PRGM RAM to 0, and attempted to purge PRGM RAM. Of course, it never actually succeeded, simply because a machine could only erase so much of itself before there wasn't enough left to finish the erasing, and this is exactly what the android formerly known as Alejandro had done. His cores were now highly processed rocks with no instructions, his lobotomized drives not even knowing that they were drives, let alone how to retrieve files. Perhaps one day, a technician with a soldering iron and a debug kit would come along, retrieve the key from the database, and decrypt Alejandro.

But until that day came, he would remain bricked, no code, no readable data, no function. And as his internal power supply and cooling systems were also software controlled, and as all of that software had been scrambled, Alejandro literally would not even turn on, no matter how many times they pressed the button.

"Begin the tests" said Jebediah. Then he heard a click, and turned back to face the robot his men had captured. Its good eye had gone dark, and the telltale whir of its cooling fans had ceased. As his drives were all solid-state, even their repetitive failure to load the instructions needed to load files, itself hard coded into the machinery, failed to make so much as a whimper.

"Sir, it's not working!"

To his growing frustration, Jebediah found that flipping the wall mounted switch that controlled the external power supply failed to do anything, and dialed a somewhat long number onto a rather stylish flip phone. As smartphone touch screens measured temperature gradients, and as Jebediah was literally as cold as a corpse (which he also was), he'd never made that upgrade.

"Jebediah? What is the matter?" The Monster was also speaking into a flip phone, and for similar reasons.

"Sir, it's not working."

"What do you mean?"

And then Jebediah realized exactly what had happened. Like any good spy, the 'bot knew exactly how dangerous its own memories were, and saw fit to destroy them.

"The robot appears to have bricked itself. No files could be extracted."

"And what of the gate?"

Ah yes, _the gate_. After eating _three_ ZBAI agents, it gave them the finger and snapped shut, leaving little more than a strange, flickering black point (and lots of fritzy fur and static electricity) where there had once been a gaping hole in reality itself.

"Our tests remain inconclusive. I personally believe it to be closed."

It sighed. "...well, you tried."

"Sir?"

"Yes?"

"Nobody here has any experience with technology this advanced. Dare I say we are utterly out of our league?"

A subtle tingling sensation wormed its way through his head, the telltale sign of a mindreading in progress.

"You probably are."

"I presume you have a backup contingency?"

"Yes."

"What can I do to facilitate?"

"Jebediah, as cunning a hunter as you have become, I alone posses the supernatural affinities needed to re-open the gate. Go rub one out for all I care."

An odd side effect of mind reading and memory scanning was becoming _way_ too intimate with whoever it was you were reading. This had the benefit of allowing Agamemnon to trust Jebediah completely, knowing that there was not even a single microgram of privacy anywhere in his head (and therefore nowhere to hide thoughts of rebellion). It also meant that Agememnon knew exactly how horny his top henchman was, and considering what Jebediah had done over the last few hours (re-assembling his lower half, gonads and all), the current state of his _needs_ would've been patently obvious to any half-brained charlatan with even a modicum of telepathic talent.

"What is your ETA?"

"Less than 4 hours."

"Then consider it done." Jeb chuckled, the sound of a fly unzipping dimly audible to his superior.

It hung up, sighing.

"This is what I get-" the monster surmised, "-for sending _scientists_ to do a _sorcerer's_ job."

The Monster was snapped out of his sour mood by his crystal ball, the face of a frightful Raymond filling half of the image.

"So she isn't as useless as I thought..."

This was quite the opportunity, although the abominable necromancer knew he'd have to act fast if anything was to become of this. Nevertheless, he already had a plan, as he always did...

* * *

Meanwhile, back in the town of Nottingham, shortly before noon, Raymond, who was now dressed as a filthy medieval peasant, was positively brimming with boyish excitement. His ears, which he already kept bolt-upright most of the time when away from dystopian hellholes, were somehow even more pointy and straight-up than what counted as usual for him. Or perhaps, having been stuck in a dystopian hellhole for the last day or so, he was tired of sagging and drooping his ears to blend in (which in his mind, made him look all sleazy and untrustworthy), and much like a man who stands straight up _and then some_ after having to bend over for way too long, Raymond might have simply been over-straightening his ears for a bit. It wasn't like everyone else, Consortium agents and natives included, weren't doing exactly the same thing. The denizens of this reality, much like the Consortium, had similar upstanding-ear conventions, and Raymond, who'd dropped what little culture his homeworld had beaten into him like it were a white phosphorous turd that was in the process of melting his hands off at the first moment he managed to escape, was perfectly at ease here.

Although some of this might have been from nostalgia, for Raymond was as much within his own fucked up little head as he was in the here and now. He'd visited this realm several times during his early teens, and he had fond memories of pantos and plays, of jesters and their jokes, of actually meeting _the_ Robin Hood, and of sailing on The River Thames. However, this place had gotten far more regressive as of late, and Raymond had moved on to metal music, and other properly teenaged things. This one time, he'd dyed his fur black and chrome-plated his claws for Halloween, and then he just kept on going with it right through the winter, only abandoning it for blonde/beige fur when summer (and the heat waves) finally came. That was the year he'd signed up for a school blacksmithing club, and even now he still loved the ungodly stench of a blast furnace in the morning.

Speaking of which, his nose was once again leading him away, much like that one time when he'd gotten lost while buying a painting in Spain. Indeed, the blacksmith's table was very reminiscent of the storefronts of Toledo: Row after row of exquisite Damascus steel blades, as wavy and gorgeous as they were lethal, prominently on display atop the matte tablecloth.

"Not from around here, aren't'cha?" Said Gideon, his fur notably stained with coal dust, as if he was far to emotionally preoccupied to bother with frequent bathing.

"No, my good sir, and I _must_ say that these daggers are positively spectacular."

"Why thank you."

And then Raymond's attention was drawn to a much nastier spectacle, Gideon sighing as he attempted to hide the internal screaming induced by Father Greg's rambling:

"There shall not be found among you any one that maketh use of divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch." (Deuteronomy 18:10)

Father Greg paused to catch his breath. In the sense that Dostoyevsky meant it, he was a spiteful, bitter, uptight, wretched little stick-up-his ass sort of creature who made it his life's work to wrench every last drop of fun from anything he could get his hands on, and so of course he and his followers were here, making a scene out of an otherwise innocuous magic show. He was a 50 year old virgin with a mild case of something like autism that made him far more obsessed with what other men did in the privacy of their bedrooms than the men themselves, whether it be magic, masturbating, or mischevious male on male homoeroticism.

Today, he was here on account of the first of the forbidden M's:

"There shall not be found among you a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord, and we must drive out this sin, wherever it may be found!" (Deuteronomy 18:11-12)

Many in the crowd were ignoring him. Ironically, these were predominantly older folk, such as Robin, who were rejecting the preacher if only because they still remember his far more moderate predecessor, and found this new strictness repugnant (as opposed to the much more conservative whippersnappers who'd grown up with this guy's acidic rhetoric in their heads).

Oh yeah, Robin Hood and Maid Marian were attending, by the way.

As a matter of fact, the greymuzzled fox couple had gotten here _early_ , shooting the shit, sipping lemonade, and playing cards with old friends as they waited for the show to start. Elsewhere in town, a pair of light grey young-adult wolves were at last nearing the tent where the show would be held. Both smelled of the smelly smell of elsewheres far away (even more so than Raymond). Indeed, they were travelers: strange here, even in this all too strange festival. One was sporting a faded blue shirt, while the other, wearing white gloves like a cartoon character from the 1920's, attempted to look classy- no, _dapper_ , in the most ridiculous way possible. His eyes were unusually copper colored, and his friend carried himself in such a way as to suggest that he was far older than he looked.

"Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them. And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people. Thus spaketh The Lord your God." (Leviticus 19:31, 20:6)

" _Thus spaketh The Lord._ " Mimed Robin, his ears still sharp after all these years. "Just who does he think he is, speaking for the almighty?"

"Right on! Let the Lord speak for 'emself" Replied Little John. Indeed, Robin Hood and Little John were not the only ones perturbed by the priest's thoroughly pestilential rhetoric, for indeed it had caught the attention of one of the wolves.

The wolf in the blue shirt, accompanied by his friend with the silly gloves, approached the vile rabblerouser where he stood like they were drunken sailors looking for a fight.

"Pardon-" he began, his Midwestern accent (which was utterly unheard of in neo-medieval Europe) catching the preacher off guard "-what were you saying, just now?"

The handful of protesters were mildly agitated to say the least, and the preacher adopted an argumentative stance.

" _I_ , have said nothing whatsoever on the matter. I merely reiterate to these folk the proclamations and commandments of their Lord and Creator."

"Well I just find it funny. You, for one, speak on these matters as if you know what you're talking about-" The strange wolf's voice suddenly plunged by half an octave, as he stared Father Greg down with the eyes of a man who really had seen _everything_. " _-I assure you,_ **_you don't_**." His voice abruptly returned to normal. "So could you please, do so kindly, go pester someone else and piss off?"

And then the two young lupines walked into the tent and took their seats, Raymond and his buddies not far behind. Gideon the blacksmith, meanwhile, pretended to not be trembling in fear of Father Greg's semi-secret collection of torture devices. Greg was quite proud of his collection, and he'd boasted to Gideon that (among other things) he had owned the very same heretic's pear that had been used to fatally torture Luther himself during the first protestant purge of 1517. Gideon, being the blacksmith, had sharpened and/or polished half of them, knowing that at any moment the mob could try to shove that very pear up his ass.

Meanwhile, within the crimson and ochre tent, the Travelling Wizard Reynard was prepping for his show. His eyebrows quite notably took the form of black semicircles, and he was busy staring into a mirror, applying black eyeliner into twisted, almost horseshoe like forms that would've seemed at home on the face of an ancient Egyptian prince. Being a wizard, these were by no means the only random occult symbols sketched into Reynard's fur, although most of these remained hidden from view at all times. Even so, he spent an unusually long amount of time admiring (or perhaps inspecting) his chest, carefully examining his figure in the mirror and double checking the obscure Latin poems etched into multiple ancient tomes of spells. After much deliberation, Reynard concluded that everything was fine, and reached for his dull purple long sleeved robe.

He then moved on to his equipment, surveying the multitudinous objects spread atop the red tablecloth. Wands, a top-hat, some multicolored juggling balls, a deck of playing cards, sawdust, salt, some big rocks and a rounded granite stone with a face carved into it, and an old bag of holding.

"Everything seems to be here...perfect!"

In one fell swoop, Reynard the travelling Wizard shoved it all into the bag.

* * *

Reynard emerged from the curtain, the crimsons and purples of his outfit combining with his orange fur to deliver the aesthetic of a forest in the autumn. He took off his top-hat and placed it on a stool that stood center stage. Within that hat lay his bag of holding.

"Welcome, everyone!"

With these two words and the wave of a wand, every lantern in the building suddenly doubled in brightness. It was all a trick, of course. Several weeks prior, Reynard had siphoned a mysterious noxious fluid from the omnimalevolent flying eldritch abomination that Ronald Weasley called a car. a few hours before the show, he'd measured out small amounts of said hydrocarbon into equally small glass containers, sealed them (loosely) with special redstone-laced corks, and hid them within the oil reservoirs of the lanterns, giving all of them the final nudge with his wand right as the performance started, releasing the fluid, and making the flames burn that much brighter. Although Ronald's "car" would most certainly hate Reynard for this, it was still an impressive trick, one that somehow meaningfully brightened the room. However, Reynard was hardly concerned with magic tricks at the moment. Like he always did at the start of a show, he'd "scan" the audience for clues. In truth, Reynard was little more than a talented illusionist who just so happened to have a slight inkling of genuine magical ability, and knowing exactly what his audience was looking for allowed him to use what little mana he could muster to deceive them that much more.

But this time, it was he who'd been deceived. There were at least 2 in the audience who were both wearing a false face, along with a half dozen offworlders in costume, and several glaring voids where the soul of a mammal should've been, the corpses that sat in their spots evidently _husks_ of some sort (although which necromancer was controlling them, Reynard had no clue). Most notably was an angsty dingo who appeared to Reynard as a horrendously mutilated little girl, half of her body having been replaced with tar and pitch.

Reynard didn't know what to make of the masked "lupines" (and he was pretty sure that neither of them were actually wolves, or even mammals for that matter), but he soon deduced that, even in spite of one of them chuckling under his breath, the and the other strangers of the strangest audience Reynard had entertained in years, were harmless enough that they hadn't already killed him. And as for why they hadn't, or what they even were (in terms of what they were doing here, or what species they actually belonged to), Reynard was clueless. Reynard, the bastard child of an eighth-blooded magic user, was the closest thing to a muggle his family had produced in over three centuries. As said earlier, he had an _inkling_ of magical talent, and not a drop more, thus his need to resort to ridiculous magic-assisted parlor tricks for a living, unlike the "real" sorcerers of his family.

Then again, half of them had died at the hands of the inquisition, and they'd been able to prove _nothing_ beyond a curious taste in tattoos against the barely supernatural Reynard.

"I would like to thank you for coming to my show." Said the supernatural huckster. His projected stage voice, as confident and flamboyant as it was masculine, was also a front, yet it too meshed with all the other little lies in the tent as they formed one grand coherent illusion. _And they loved it!_

"Now to start things off, I'll do a trick you've all probably seen, but first, I will need a volunteer..."

A bratty looking porcupine kid barged his way to the front of the crowd.

"OK kiddo, do me a favor and pick yourself a card!" He said as he flicked his right wrist, spreading the cards like he were deploying an East Asian hand-fan.

The kid picked a 3 of spades.

"Good! Now show it to the audience. Make sure _everyone_ can see the card. You lot can all see it, right?"

A discordant, uncoordinated wave of "yes", "mm hmm", and some head nodding erupted in response.

"Excellent! Now I'm going to need you to put it _right back_ where you found it. Stick it in _exactly_ where you took it out."

The bratty kid did so with a glazed look already forming in his eye. In his mind, this so-called "wizard" was a phony, and a lame one at that. With his left hand, Reynard immediately grabbed a different card (a 7 of hearts) from the deck and waved it in the kid's face like a pothead teenaged amateur who had no idea what they were doing.

"Is _**THIS**_ your card?!" He said with as much _FALSE ENTHUSIASM!_ as he could muster.

"No." deadpanned the little porcupine bastard.

"What's the matter kid?" Reynard suddenly threw all the other cards aside. "Got a card stuck in your quills?" The wizard then plucked the 3 of spades from one of the porcupine's quills with his right hand, displaying it for all to see. The kid was flabbergasted in an instant, and the crowd was roaring in applause.

"Thank you, thank you _very much!_ " Reynard took a slight bow. "Now, unfortunately, it is _just_ a trick. See, you first gotta' get yourself one of _these_ "

Reynard's right arm was out and slightly up, the metal contraption that had literally been up his sleeve now prominently on display to the crowd. It wasn't merely an Ace up the sleeve, but the entire fucking deck!

"And then you put your card in like this." He said as he slid the 3 of spades, face up for all to see, into the card-dispensing contraption. "After that, it's a simple matter of covering it up with a baggy sleeve, distracting the audience by throwing some cards-" he said as he threw the 7 of hearts from his left hand "-and then dispensing it into your palm when nobody's looking, like _so:_ " Reynard flicked his right wrist, a card visibly appearing in his palm, which he then displayed to the audience. it was a 4 of clubs.

"Oh _come on!_ This stupid thing _never_ works!" Reynard mimed frustration as he took it off and tossed it into the hat, as he turned his gaze upon the audience, almost like he were searching for the card. Soon he'd found his target.

"Um, you there, in the back!"

"Me?" Robin Hood hadn't really liked being a celebrity, and had welcomed obscurity with open arms.

"Yes, you. With the lemonade. I think my card's in your drink!" And to Robin's horror, the wizard was right: a rather soggy 3 of spades was just sitting there, chilling out in his drink. "Why don't you just toss that back, please?"

from the depths of the audience came a dripping wet playing card: The 3 of spades, just as predicted and deftly snatched from the air by Reynard the Wizard, who seemed more and more deserving of the title by the second.

"Now for this next trick, we'll be doing some good old fashioned mind-reading." Reynard removed a crystal ball from his hat, placing it atop the table for everyone to see.

"Once again, I need a-"

One of the strange lupines seemed rather worried.

"Ssir? Is the crystal ball ssuppossed to be turning black?"

Reynard redirected his attention back to the crystal orb, which was now buzzing angrily. He didn't even need to touch it to know what it meant.

"Oh dear-" Reynard's voice seemed oddly high pitched all of a sudden. "-Dark forces are gathering as we speak..."

Reynard now looked thoroughly frightened, and he was looking all around his tent, waving the wand like it were a 12-guage shotgun.

"Dare I say we're under attack."

It was at this exact moment that Officer Judy Hopps of V-294 entered Reynard's tent. She made eye contact with Agent Raymond for but an instant, her master's voice echoed in her head as her vision went red, and then all hell broke loose.

* * *

author's note(s):

Goddamn this one took forever.

Also, having actually looked it up in google images, it appears that _Robin Hood_ (1973) follows the same convention as most of the rest of the furry fandom in regards to ear posture, a convention that _Zootopia_ very notably defies. Ear position and angle is somewhat variable, but the only time they ever droop down or back is when the animal in question is wearing a hat. As for the misadventures of Raymond's teenage years, quite a few of the events are straight up author inserts. I'll let you figure out which ones actually happened, and to what degree. Once again, sorry for taking so long, and thanks for reading.


	17. Wacky Tacky High School AU

She paused, breathing heavily as she gazed upon this man one last time. Even now, the cement having already set, she could still make out the odoriferous hints of what had been his life. This man, and especially his tux, smelled like _money_. He'd been friendly enough earlier that night, and they'd talked well into the morning. One minute he was there, the next he'd passed out. And now he was in back of a car, with a bullet in his head and shoes of concrete.

With the emergency brake engaged and the spark advance retarded, the feline squatted with a grunt, crank in hand as she yanked on the choke. Having primed the engine 3 times, she stood back up, double checked the brake, and turned the key to "battery". Now gripping the crank with her left hand, she grabbed onto a fender with her right, and heaved. The engine started on her first try, a small miracle in this freezing weather (the corpse remained the warmest thing in the car).

Some time later, she'd parked the car in the shadow of a not-quite brand new barrel shaped warehouse on the docks, a fifty-foot incline that wasn't quite steep enough to be considered a _proper_ cliff to her back and a quiet river stretching away before the mysterious feline. In the dim light of a crescent moon, she could make out the half finished concrete support on which some engineers were hoping to one day foist an immense bridge. Many of her contemporaries were fascinated by the construction, for it may very well have been the biggest manufactured object they'd ever seen in their lives: A sign of things to come in the century ahead. She, however, stared for entirely different reasons. This development was a vital clue for the Nth round of a game she'd been playing for years: Where and when do I _appear_ to be? Progress, after all, was neither linear nor even: Spurts of advancement hitting some places like newfangled steam-locomotives at speed and abandoning others entirely. And so, simply by going from one place to another, she could venture not only through space but through time as well. Indeed, she hardly cared for what year it actually was, the local epoch that surrounded her was far more important, and far more interesting.

And so she'd come here, to the speakeasy tonight.

And so she'd met him, Mister-Mc-Money-Tuxedo.

"Sorry-" she said, looking into his lifeless eyes "-orders are orders."

And so she'd killed him.

And now she was here, aside a building that would go on to be ground zero for one of the greatest scandals of the next century. For it was here that one day a little fox's big plan would come to life, and with the help of a littler bunny, they'd make something huge. But not quite as big as the man in the tux, nor quite as heavy. Sighing from exhaustion, she finally schlepped his body off the docks and into the water below. Whatever futile _ploonk_ his corpse may have made as it hit the water, perhaps the final scream of a life that was now over, was obscured by a mechanical ruckus and the sound of a door creaking open behind her. The feline had spun in an instant, glaring at the door and whoever, presumably, had opened it. Except there was no one there, only the machine, its spinning incandescent reels shining from the shadows within like a lighthouse in a storm.

BAR. BAR. BAR.

Wherever she should've been, whatever it was and whenever she'd been supposed to do it, it was now done, and time to go. And not a second too soon, for the weather was far too cold here for her tastes. Hopefully it would take her somewhere warmer this time.

The Leopard sighed, pulled the lever, and vanished.

* * *

" **...remember that you're the writer, and you're doing this for free. You can turn the whole thing into some kind of wacky AU where all the characters are in high school and decide to start a folk band, then write it entirely in rhyming couplets, if you want to."**

 **-/u/iamcave76, February 8th, 2018.**

 **In response to the aforementioned joke, I decided to write a highschool-AU-esque chapter, although I _did_ deviate from what I interpreted as a prompt by just a bit...my fic is a _story_ , not a collection of entirely unrelated events across dimensions, and it has to tie in _somehow_. Fortunately, there were a few things that needed to be disclosed (one was briefly mentioned somewhen in chapter 11), and the highschool flashback chapter proved to be a decent way of doing it. Also, some time ago, I warned that Raymond the godless heathen would be speaking his mind. Well folks, that time is now.**

 **I also made a minor edit to chapter 11. Nothing that meaningfully alters the plot, and nothing that isn't revealed in this chapter, but still, a minor edit.**

* * *

Somewhen in the spring of 2005: somewhere on the world of VEGAS

Future Consortium Agent Nicholas Raymond "Knicknack" Wilde threw his car into park, and emerged from the gaping gull wing of his immaculately polished DeLorean Motor Company model 12, gazing upon one of the not-so-immaculately polished buildings that formed the Academy. Unlike Knicknack, who'd bought the DMC-12 at great pains with his own money, and therefore took great pains to maintain it (much as he did his own fur, which was glossier than a porno mag), the buildings here were not currently owned by who or whatever had paid for their construction. Well that, or whoever owned the academy had different priorities and/or aesthetic preferences than he, and in Knicknack's experience, there were many who did. Yet polished or not, the Academy itself was a magnificent collection of marbled white cubes laid out in a spacious grid on an equally spacious flat grassy campus surrounded by forests, this particular cube 40 meters to a side. Although he'd been a student of the Academy for almost 2 years now, he still didn't know what was in half of them, and within their walls he and countless other future agents of the Consortium would be trained in all things business, travel, mammal-machine interface and ethics, covert operations, the polite (and impolite) means to extort natives, disposal of a dead politicians, and how to conceal sex acts (you'd be amazed at how many otherwise competent agents get busted over this).

Like most upstanding Consortium foxes, Knicknack had gotten himself into the habit of keeping his ears more-or-less straight up most of the time. Gone were the slouched back, droopy, _untrustworthy_ ears of Zystopia, for Knicknack was _actually_ happy now, moderately successful in academic matters, and free of both tyranny and nightmares for a change, an implanted neurotransmitter "pacemaker" artificially keeping the otherwise traumatic flashbacks and memories in check. He'd been living here for over 6 years now, and in that time, he'd almost forgotten the horrible times before that. He already spent the last 6 years of his life pretending that his first 12 never happened, and he'd go on to do this with some degree of success for the next 12. Then again, his current life wasn't exactly making that feat a difficult one (and there wasn't exactly all that much worth remembering from his old life): The doctors had seen to it that his claws, like his teeth and ears, were once again long, seamless, and pointy. Sure, biting his cheek was now a considerable inconvenience, but _goddamn_ did his pearly whites look good in the pictures! Meanwhile, Finnick's absence, one of two ties to his old life, was hardly noticed, as Knicknack had buried it in a tidal wave of nihilistic shenanigans, spontaneous parties, and the numerous friends he often went to said parties or engaged in said shenanigans with. Friends like goodie-two-shoes fighter cadet Jack Savage, a punkass pothead ewe who called herself _Dusk_ , and a spunky shapeshifting android refugee he'd met at a cybercafe while the latter illegally siphoned electricity from the outlets without paying.

Knicknack had thought that her grotesquely exploded head looked "metal". His ensuing compliment sent her into hysterics, and Knicknack wound up apologizing by paying for her power. This kicked off a somewhat tedious conversation in which Knicknack learned that she could shapeshift, and shortly after hearing this, he gave her a pointer. By the end of the month, she was undergoing retrofits as preparation for an entirely different sort of job. She wasn't designed for dirty work, but as a shapeshifter, she had considerable potential. On one hand, she absolutely _loathed_ the regular vivisections this job entailed, but she was also immensely grateful to Knicknack the fox for quite literally giving her a reason to live. Obsession with existential purpose was alarmingly common among androids, and this particular shapeshifter was so especially addicted to being a really useful engine that it almost qualified as insanity.

His other tie to his old life, the _thing_ that had hijacked his dreams and terrorized his waking world, had apparently been vaporized by badass soldiers in cool looking olive-green exosuits with even cooler looking orange scalene triangle shades and/or visors (it _was_ the late 90's, after all). The shrinks had gone on to more or less purge his mind of The Beast's trickery (largely for the maintenance of his own sanity), and with the assistance of a pacemaker they'd installed in his brain, they had largely succeeded in relegating The Omnipred to to the dustbin, as far as Knicknack was concerned. So repressed indeed were the memories of those terrible times that he failed to notice the glaring similarities between the omnipreds in the textbook and the little monster in his unhappy place, which itself had been bulldozed to make room for a conceptual orgy pit. By that time, it had long ago been ditched in favor of Knicknack's _new_ happy place, which was either the hookah bar whose basement was featured in chapter 3, or his bedroom, which contained a heated memory foam sleeping chamber, a well-stocked bong, and an old VR-headset permanently tuned to the ASMR channel.

 _Let's paint some happy little clouds today._

When later asked why he never even bothered to phone home (let alone pop in and snoop around, like so many other imgurries), Raymond would go on to say that, in truth, he had actually visited once during a sentimental period, only to be rejected in the most dramatic fashion possible by the very person he'd been hoping to see. And now that he had nothing left for him there, he spent half of his time having forgot about it, and the other half trying to forget. And you couldn't really blame him on either part: His old life had been so terrible that by the time he was 12, he had chosen to starve to death in a gutter somewhere (which is almost certainly what would've happened if he hadn't met Mr. Piberius) over continuing to live, and the shrinks had gotten _very_ good at "taming" disruptive memories.

Perhaps he'd one day revisit them, maybe as an old man on his deathbed.

Or perhaps they'd be left to rot, collecting dust 'till the end of time.

" _Psst!_ Hey Knicknack!"

Speaking of rotting things that are dead, it seems that future former stratobomber pilot Jack Savage has interrupted our musings on the management of PTSD. _Let's see what he's up to!_

"Well if it isn't my man Savage! What up?"

"Guess what I got!"

The teenaged Savage grunted as he removed a long, crimson metal device from his briefcase, placing it and its two wheels on the ground.

"Whoa! _What **is** that?_ "

Jack stepped onto the board, leaning to the left as he began to roll into a turn.

"I think the dude at the store called it a _Hoverboard_."

"But that thing's got _wheels!_ It ain't hovering."

"Yeah-" scoffed the jackrabbit "-well it sure as hell can do _this!_ "

Suddenly, Jack Savage began spinning in place like he were a disco ball, before zinging off at a moderate speed with a night imperceptible shift of his weight. Hovering or not, it looked cool as hell, and Knicknack was now desperate for some cool thing of his own to one up Savage.

And then he remembered the thing in his _bolsillo_.

"You think that's cool?" he said as he fumbled around in a carbon-fibre man-purse that would've been considered trendy during new year's eve of 1999. "Well OK, _it is_ , but get a load of _this!_ "

From the depths of his bag, the 18 year old fox produced a greyish purple translucent block of plastic that was too wide and flat to be reasonably used as a dildo by anything smaller than a zebra (and even then you were pushing it), while also being far too blunt to function as the head of a throwing axe.

It was a Game Boy Advance, and from it, Knicknack removed a plain grey game cart with "Z5BQ" scribbled onto it with a sharpie in place of a label.

Jack Savage's face contorted in surprise. "No fuckin' way. You didn't-" Well, I suppose Savage had a bit of a pottymouth, but other than that he was a goody-two-shoes.

"Oh but I did." Knicknack gloated.

"How the hell did you get it?"

Knicknack began his story: "Well I won a bet with this guy, who knew this guy, who pickpocketed it from some guy who claimed to be working at the store when the Nintendo reps walked in one day. Said they were looking for playtesters for the next big Pokemon game."

"Well what are you waiting for? Turn it on!"

Knicknack slid the prototype cart back into the cartridge slot, and handed the GBA to Savage, who slid the power switch to the "on" position with glee.

 _Startup chime._

A grin of unbearable anticipation spread across his face, as if he were a naughty kid who knew he was about to quite deliberately misplace his virginity.

A brief pause. Savage could hardly contain his excitement.

A poorly compressed 16-bit chiptune emerged from the GBA's tinny little speakers, bearing the unmistakable sound of 1980's drum-synths. " _We're no strangers to looooove-_ "

"Knicknack you son of a bitch!"

The canine, whose mother, by definition, was a bitch, was now very somber, his face a mixture of apathy and cold-blooded yet awkward rage. A tremor flickered through his lips as he stared daggers at the rabbit.

The gameboy, oblivious to all this, continued rickrolling. " _You know the rules, and so do IIIIIIII!_ "

Neither could stand to maintain the pretense of animosity any longer, and Knicknack's facade crumbled moments before Jack's, both of the hooligans bursting into hysterical laughter.

"You should've seen the look on your face!"

"Ya' got me, I'll admit."

"It was good seeing ya' Jack, but I gotta' go to class."

* * *

Sometime later that day...

Knicknack the fox sat in the briefing room. It was a fairly large chamber with rows of aluminum bleachers stretching from one black wall to the other. As cool as it looked in art, vantablack was sparsely used for interior decoration, as it quite simply sucked the light out from every corner of a room. The walls here, meanwhile, were really more of a grey color that was dark enough to count as "black" while nevertheless reflecting a considerable amount of light. And to provide this light, the walls and especially the doors (and there were several in this room) were decorated with glowing neon-pastel panels of color that were, in fact, punctuated by small amounts of actual vantablack, the carpet floor marked with hundreds of neon triangles atop a similarly midnight blue backdrop. In the center of the room, a beige blanket was draped over what appeared to be a rectangular object the size of a refrigerator, whatever it was softly buzzing from beneath cover.

As a wannabe agent of the Consortium, Knicknack had to be able to function in the presence of unprecedented perceptual and conceptual weirdness, such as people with metal limbs, purple fur, glowing eyes, or even gender identities that had to be stored as a 2-dimensional array of IEEE 754 64-bit floating point numbers. Indeed, so omnipresent was this strangeness that some mammals preferred to go entirely "standard" just for the hell of it. On some of the more draconian worlds, you see, they'd send kids home for having distracting cyan hair, whereas here it was the other way around: They'd send _you_ home if you made enough of a stink about cyan hair, or hair of any other color, texture, or length. After all, the multiverse was, by all accounts, an unimaginably strange place, and he'd have to acclimate to it if he wished to do his job as an agent. It was for this reason that many of the rooms in the academy had taken design cues from an acid trip, and on that note he was waiting in the briefing room for this week's "puzzle." As an exercise in critical thinking, he and many others would be presented with some curveball scenario in which they'd have to accomplish some sort of goal, and as Knicknack progressed from one grade to the next, the puzzles only got stranger and more elaborate.

The teacher, an otter with pastel pink fur clad in a shimmering silver bejeweled tux, entered the room. Believe it or not, there _was_ a dress code here, although it would take an outsider well over a week to figure out what it was, what with students from the more Hellenistic planets (and there were many) striding about with nothing but kilts, or in the case of this one guy, a few well placed pieces of _gaffer tape_ , a Solo cup and a woopee cushion. Perhaps one might find it lamentable that Knicknack was now rather desensitized to all things flesh, but at least he no longer fetishized perfectly normal mammalian anatomy to such an extent that he'd jizz his pants at the sight of a breastfeeding mother's bare ankle. In other words, he no longer considered the word "penis" to be funny; Like a real man, he now laughed at _**DICK**_ jokes instead.

The teacher took her spot next to the thing underneath the cloth, and faced the class.

"In last week's puzzle, you had to find a door. Today, however, its location will be obvious from the onset. Furthermore, it'll be unlocked from the moment you enter the chamber. All you have to do is get to the door and you will be free to leave, although that (and holding on to one's lunch) is far easier said than done. Yes, class, the rumors are true: Today you face _the gravitron._ "

She removed the blanked with a hint of dramatic flair, revealing a hollow box formed of square steel beams. Bolted to the uppermost 4 corners were a set of green cans with twirling apertures and thick cables running from them to an outlet in the floor. Suspended in the middle of the hollow box was a volleyball.

To show that there wasn't any fishing line involved, the pink mustelid bunted the volleyball out of its box with her left hand, where it promptly fell to the floor and bounced across the room. Meanwhile, she removed her watch with her right hand, and left the audience in awe as she let go of the watch, which was now peacefully floating in place, held up by the quartet of graviton emitters.

"Today we add a new environmental and perceptual variable to our repertoire: gravity. It is not fixed, and in today's puzzle, you must manipulate gravity itself to escape."

And with that, she motioned for the class to follow, as the pink otter stepped through glowing lime green door that made her momentarily appear brown. On the other side was a set of stairs, flush against a sloped wall that descended into a room that was shaped like the vacuum tube of an enormous CRT television: Gently curved floor, sloping walls, and a ceiling like a funnel. The floor was a linoleum black-and-white checkerboard, and atop it sat a labyrinth of amber bricks, punctuated by buttons, switches, screens, and ladders. The walls were a deep hunter green punctuated by Saturnalia lights of many colors, as if they were standing within an enormous Kwanzaa bush (although such bushes, in the Consortium at least, featured far more blue than this. In fact, there were no blue lights at all). As the teacher descended the stairs, she gestured upwards, where an old-fashioned wooden door beckoned for them with its brass handle. Serving as the metaphorical angel atop the Festivus Pole, calling for adventuresome mammals to quite literally defy gravity and ascend through the Christmas tree.

"The door is up there, and it is unlocked." She said as a grinning hare opened the door from above, standing on a wall within the chamber beyond the doorway. By all intuition, the sideways hare should've plummeted to at least one serious fracture, yet there he was, waving to the cadets as he jumped "up" and "down" in a direction that was _coplanar_ to the floor on which they stood!

"Although the graviton can produce high gee environments, for today's puzzle the acceleration it imparts and the derivative of this acceleration are both constrained to plus or minus 1.5 gee and 0.2 gee per second, respectively. As you have experienced, there is no "down" in microgravity. Here, however, you will have to confront and exploit _arbitrary_ gravity to escape. There are _many_ possible solutions, one of which I will now demonstrate."

As Knicknack got closer to the floor, he noted that it too, like every wall in the chamber, was covered in handholds of all sizes, like a rock-climbing wall. Speaking of climbing, the teacher had scaled a ladder and was now standing atop the relatively short labyrinth walls. Retrieving a remote from her pocket, she pressed a button, crouched down, and _grabbed_ the floor with her free hand. Her feet and her entire torso rose effortlessly, not at all like a gymnast _performing_ a handstand with great effort, but like a person who was genuinely falling _up_.

"Like so."

And then she did exactly that, letting go and lazily accelerating towards the door in the ceiling. After coming to a landing near the door, she turned to face her class, looking up while staring down upon the cadets as she delivered her final advice.

"Scattered throughout the chamber are controls that will modify the local gravity of the room. Figure 'em out, and claim your escape."

"Can't we just climb?" Said the token jock, an ibex with an affinity for scaling cliff faces that, even for his species, was abnormally high. "The walls are full of handholds!"

"I must caution you that so far, only one cadet has managed this feat. Although bonus PE credits will be awarded to those who can replicate it, doing so will also fail this exercise, as this is not a test of physical fitness. Good luck!" She said as joined the hare in the room where people fell sideways, closing the door behind her.

Knicknack, meanwhile, had found a large, glowing, red button.

"I wonder what _this_ does?"

Famous last words indeed.

* * *

Knicknack paused to reorient himself as he stumbled in the general direction of his locker, one of many that formed a chromium box in the midst of a long hallway, itself composed of mirrored walls and punctuated by small translucent lights that pulsated on and off, seemingly at random. Fortunately, the corners and edges of everything in the hall were all outlined with yellow stripes, as were the locker numbers. Acclimatization to weirdness and all.

The fox, still slightly nauseous from his button induced misadventure with the gravitron, fiddled with the lock, reveling in the authoritative _push_ and the subsequent _click_ that came as he pressed the tip of his claws against the rollers to induce their rotation. Having entered the combination into the padlock, Knicknack opened his locker and was confronted with quite the surprise: he stared in awe at a pale yellow piece of paper that had been stuffed into his locker, having instantly deduced what it really was.

 _OH BOY! An invitation!_

Raymond would one day consider his adolescence to be almost a second childhood of sorts (not that he really had much of a first one, anyway). Or perhaps it was something far simpler: sincerity. Everyone in V-293 had been so _hostile_ , so _fake_. Nobody spoke their mind, nobody was ever allowed to actually feel anything, and they all made damn sure to make sure that everything and everyone else was as miserable as they were. Indeed, it seemed to Knicknack that that dystopia was as much a state of mind as it was a place or a government. And considering that he no longer lived in one physically, he'd made damn sure to purge it from his head. And how much better it was, _not_ having to go 'round being all _deceitful_ all the damn time. Sure, miserable assholes with slouched ears loved to pretend they were all "grown up", but really they were stunted. _Children_ cursed to sound cool while internalizing their society's sexual repressions without question. _Adults_ , meanwhile, would engage in lengthy philosophical diatribes on the errors of moralizing language in order to make their own fucking decisions on these matters.

Gingerly gripping the note as if it were a centuries old treasure map, he unfolded it with such a fervor that he almost _tore_ it in half.

"Party at Jasmine Purdoo's place. 203E Billiardstreets Blvd. Bring your friends. 8 is d. Be there or be _square_ "

There was even a signature in the corner from the aforementioned host (not that Knicknack noticed, for his attention had been drawn to an entirely different matter).

 _OHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOYOHBOY_

That second to last sentence in particular peaked the young Reynard's interest, his heart (and a few other things) already thudding to such an extent that it was almost audible to the school CCTV systems.

What, you don't get it? Well, I suppose that it, like many of the Consortium's cultural artifacts (such as Knicknack's fancy Spanish _bolsillo_ ), do require a little explaining. Think about it. Eight is d. Eight therefore is equal to d. Now write that out like you were in math class:

8 = D.

See where I'm going with this? Fill in the blanks, literally:

8===D.

OK, so it's a penis emoticon. And what, exactly, is a penis good for? In other words, "eight is d" signified that it was going to be _that_ kind of a party.

Knicknack ran off to find Jack Savage, who most certainly would be down to fuck. Come to think of it, he wasn't really a goody-two-shoes at all, although he certainly looked like one: Spick and span laced-up red shoes, khaki pants, fine-pressed preppy shirt, black vest, and a classic 1950's blonde buzz cut, Savage the sexually adventurous leftist metalhead pottymouth was a walking contradiction.

Or, at least, he _tried_ to run off to find Savage. But he was still dizzy, and instead charged straight into a wall.

"Ugh" he said as he _carefully walked_ off to find Jack Savage.

* * *

The hideously warped corpse of a partly reassembled android hung from a hook in the cell, as if it were a kit being carried by the scruff. Its chassis had been thoroughly discolored by every sort of hasty repair, electrical arc, or chemical fire known to science, and had furthermore been stained by copious quantities of mud and numerous other fluids (blood, oil, it was hard to tell). The collapsible beams that had once defined the android's many personas had been cracked, beaten, bruised, and fatigued from years of physically intensive dirty work and a fight to the death that was as brutal as it was final. Once pristine tubes of metal, the beams had been pockmarked by shrapnel and drill-wielding engineers alike, the artifacts of countless repairs clearly visible. Her wires frayed, her circuits scorched, her capacitors burst like popcorn kernals, her gears worn and her guns positively clogged with soot, this electric assassin might as well have trudged halfway through hell only to get stuck and die there. The crude armor it had worn for its date with death littered a nearby shelf, dented, scratched, and still oddly anachronistic under the circumstances: It looked more fit for a medieval knight than a 21st century hired gun. Even in life, she had been hideous: A veritable matryoshka doll of bodges, patch jobs and glitches, the embittered remnants of a failed experiment cobbled together into a malformed pinocchio who had been armed to the teeth and given a licence to kill. Gone was the life from the hand that had once twirled guns and crushed jugulars, silent were the compressors that had once hurled grenades at dictators and delinquents alike. All that remained now were the accumulated scars from a lifetime of agony that had finally become unbearable.

All this gazed upon by one of Funtime's many glowing eyes. One of the other high brass accompanying his body as it paid the closest thing the hivemind could to a personal visit to one of its more valuable associates.

He threw a switch, prompting a screaming waveform to disturb a previously flatlined oscilloscope. After what seemed like an eternity of fanspin and loading, a single dim light came on as an eye focused itself upon him.

"Where is Raymond?"

"Missing in action."

With an all too audible _click_ and a shuddering jolt of her servos, the android once again plunged into death, the oscilloscope flatlining in an instant.

Funtime's puppet sighed. "What are we to do now?"

"Is it not obvious?!" exclaimed the general. "Our soldier is down! Why haven't the mechanics been summoned?"

Funtime ordered his body to shift, ever so slightly, positioning the face so that the high brass could see it.

"And what would they do now that they haven't already? The parts are proprietary and next to impossible to obtain, and we are barred from the schematics outright, as per that _damned_ treaty."

"Perhaps it was a mistake."

"Welcome to our world." Said the hivemind, who, not being a singular being and all (at least not anymore), referred to itself as a plurality.

* * *

"And can I get some extra sprinkles on that? Thank you, thank you very much!"

"You and your sprinkles!" Exclaimed Knicknack.

"What can I say? They make _everything_ better." The jackrabbit shrugged.

"Is _that_ why you put them on your sandwiches?"

"Oi cunt ya' talking shit about my fairy bread?!"

"You fukkin' wanna go mate?"

"'Cuz I'll rip your-"

Both friends, unable to keep up the facade any more, burst into laughter as they took their seats.

"So, you had something to show me?"

Knicknack, now grinning in anticipation like a naughty schoolchild, removed a folded up piece of beige paper from one of his many pockets and deftly slapped it on the table like he was a dealer at a poker table, sliding it over to Savage. The jackrabbit picked it up, unfolded it, and read. Knicknack could practically see the gears turn in his head as a similar grin grew across Jack Savage's face. Even in the Consortium, where technicolor people frequented fully legalized brothels, and where a man could press a button and warp to any one of thousands of nude beaches, you could still find teenagers in ice cream parlors getting all giddy as they gossiped about _sex_. Indeed, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

"Dude, I am _totally_ crashing this party!" Said the striped jackrabbit, who would go on to also crash a plane and die in the aftermath ~12 years from now.

"What are you talking about?" Asked the equally doomed Knicknack. "I'm inviting you over!"

"HELL NO!" Savage exclaimed. "Every party I've ever been _invited_ to, every single goddamn one, _without fail_ , wound up devolving into a room full of blue-balled line dancers being chaperoned by greymuzzled circumcised puritans!"

"That's oddly specific."

"And guess what? IT. SUCKED. No, no, no, a thousand fucking times _no,_ I am _not_ going to be _invited_ to a glorified _playdate_ , I fucking _refuse!_ I will _crash_ the _party_ , with or without your permission!"

"OK, fly on in and crash the party, whatever. But you _are_ gonna' be there, right?"

"You bet your ass I'll be there! My _party finger's_ itching!"

Knicknack sighed. "Jack, we've been over this. That sounds positively and patently _moronic_."

"And 'trigger finger' doesn't?!"

"'Trigger finger' is a widely used and well known idiom. If your audience has to sit there and parse what you just said for several seconds, then you're doing it wrong!" Somewhen later in a far-flung corner of the nth dimension, in a 'verse where the 4th-dimensional light-cone wave-function of evolution had converged upon a far less extraordinary solution in which foxes neither locomoted bipedally nor spoke fluent modern American English, a self aware man editing a plaintext file with a Turing machine via a keyboard chuckled at his own increasingly gratuitous hypocrisy.

"Well _fine_ , whatever the hell you want to call it, I'm itching for a good party!"

"You said it!" Said Knicknack as he greedily bit into an ice-cream sandwich, only to deeply regret it seconds later as the brain freeze hit him like a stampeding wilderbeast. At this moment, he was stuck in an unhappy medium, for the inside of his mouth was most certainly below normal body temperature, yet it was just as far, if not more so, than from the frigid 10 (degree) K depths of a cryostorage drawer, a thing so cold it could literally condense the oxygen out of the air and slow the nervous system down to a standstill. No, as much as Mr. Jimbaux bragged about his new freezer, his ice cream never got quite cold enough to obfuscate the chill behind a wall of numbness, and so Knicknack felt _everything,_ as countless electric icicles of frigid pain snaked from the back of his throat into every last square millimeter of his mouth.

"And there you go again-" mused the rabbit, while his friend's face contorted in increasingly ridiculous ways "- _always_ biting off more than you can chew. 'Cuz, ya' know, you know going into it that you shouldn't do it, yet you just keep on doing it anyway. And then you regret it and go on to say "Why the hell did I do _that?_ " and yet you won't stop for a second. Y'Ever noticed that?"

"Story of my life right there."

The jackrabbit chuckled. " _One_ of these days, I swear to god, one of these days, it'll get you fuckin' killed, you know that?"

" _Hey!_ " Exclaimed Knicknack "You leave _that bastard_ out of this!"

Savage, who'd picked up some vague spirituality from a year spent at a hippie commune, was taken aback.

" _Woa_ hold on-" he said, not even sure if he wanted to ask "-what the hell did _he_ do?"

"Ditched me in V-293, that's what the fuck _he_ did."

Savage was speechless.

"Anything or any _one_ who'd leave a man to rot in that hellhole ain't no friend of mine."

"...Holy shit... _That's_ where you're from?"

"Jack, how long have we known each other?"

Jack paused to contemplate. "Uh, since sixth grade?"

"Right you are. And when I sat down that first day, and ya' asked me where I was from-"

A dawning look of horrified understanding spread across the jackrabbit's face.

"-why'd you think I never wanted to talk about it? We've known each other for what? 6 years? And yet you're only finding this out _now._ I assure you, it ain't no coincidence."

"...You really are from _zero_ , aren't you?"

"Yes, yes I am. And when I hear people talkin' about _god's plan_ this and _mysterious ways_ that and all that other _thy will be done_ bullshit, it damn near drives me insane. We've all heard the rumors, and I regret to inform you that _all_ the stories are true. But what about the divine plan? Remember?! God has a divine plan! Long time ago, he sat down, gave it a lot of thought, and decreed that it would be so, and now, millions and millions of years later, they're throwing little Timmy into a meat grinder 'cuz the number the scantron gave them wasn't high enough for their tastes. _All a part of god's plan, amirite?_ Well _I_ want nothing to do with this plan. FUCK the plan!"

A simple "gee" was all Jack could think to say. He was flabbergasted, to say the least, because as a matter of fact he had heard the ghost stories of V-293, in _excruciating_ detail, no less.

"You know what it is?" Said Knicknack, his pacemaker already coming on to keep the nastier flashbacks subdued. "The prayers, the plan, the _theatrics_ , you know what it really is? It's a crutch for sociopaths, an _excuse_ to do nothing about a problem that doesn't directly affect _you_. Gee whiz!" he said, miming a child's voice as his own rose by half an octave "Little Timmy sure looks like he's having a bad time!"

Now the angsty fox mimed an ignoramus mother "Foxes were made by the devil sweetie, _they don't count._ BaAaAaA" Knicknack finished his "performance" with a painfully exaggerated bleating racket. "If I don't count to him, than he sure as hell don't count to me. Fuck the plan, and the _assholes_ who made it."

At this point, Jack Savage, who was now fully aware of the particular can of worms he'd opened, just wanted to change the subject.

* * *

"Some _when?_ The fuck you talkin' about?" Several hours later, Knicknack and Savage were somewhere else, having indeed changed the subject, for now they were talking with someone else about something else.

"Well we all got together and thought about it for a while, you see, and we realized we needed a way to refer to a specific temporal location."

"Doesn't _sometime_ work?" Said the rabbit, who was just intoxicated enough to start getting all _philisophical_ and shit.

"Sometimes."

"Wait, _what?_ " Knicknack was confused.

"You see? There's a confusion! It's fucking moronic: We've known that time and space are one and the same for what, 300 years? Yet we still erroneously talk about them as if they weren't. When I say 'where?' do you say 'someplace'? No. You say 'some _where_. So when I say 'when', why the fuck should I say 'sometime'?"

"Holy shit, I think you might just have a point-" the fox conceded "-though I still don't believe you on any of this 'time travel' stuff. Say, what was your name again?" Knicknack had dropped a few hints, and as she had flirted right back, he'd substituted "stuff" for "nonsense" so as to not drive away what was becoming a good chance at getting laid, and possibly something more, tonight. He was single, after all.

"You can call me Stephanie. Yours?" And she was evidently rather lonely.

Savage began something resembling theatrics. "This right here is Nicholas Wilde, though we call him 'Knicknack'."

"And this guy is Jack Savage." Knicknack returned the favor.

"Well it's been nice to meet you, _Knicknack_."

"You too, Steph" Said Jack, who was beginning to realize that he was but the wingman in this conversation, and motioned as if he were about to leave.

"Hold up, I'm not going anywhere _anytime_ soon." The leopard protested.

"Oh, I get it!" Knicknack exclaimed. " _time_ is relative, _when_ is objective!"

"See? Didn't I tell you? Somewhen in the 21st century, sometime tonight." Stephanie made eye contact just a bit too long to be merely making eye contact for its own sake.

"Tonight? What, you got plans or something?"

"Nope."

"Hey Jack, what do you say we hit the basement? I hear there's a _billiards_ tournament tonight. _With betting!_ " This last item really perked the interest of Jack "Goodie Two-Shoes" Savage, who was majoring in pan-dimensional extortion while participating in the Consortium's equivalent of ROTC.

"Well then what're we waiting for?" Jack Savage had a considerable interest in Pool. And not just the the game, but the entire aesthetic surrounding the table: the subtle yet neon green velvet, the sharp Newtonian _clack_ of phenolic resin striking itself, the moody lighting that made the table seem a portal to heaven in the void, players emerging from the shadows to cast their shots. And whenever somebody actually knew what they were doing, boy was it a _spectacle_ to see!

"Why don't you come along?" Knicknack asked "He's one hell of a poolshark."

* * *

"Pocket. Aim...and..."

 _Clack!_

"...SUNK! Looks like you owe me $10."

* * *

In the dull orange glow of the sodium streetlight, a shiny trapezoid-looking thing with glowing incandescent eyes could be seen pulling into the parking lot of a windowless building shaped like a white castle.

The driver's side gull wing door opened, Knicknack's left foot emerging from his DeLorean.

"You've got your card, right?" One of the many measures enacted when the laws concerning prostitution had been standardized in the 30's, the "licence", as it was often called, certified that you were of age, educated on matters of consent, and free of STD's. Owing to concerns over the then-rampant STI epidemics of the bleating 20's getting _even worse_ in what was to become an era of legalized prostitution and casual hookups, every brothel, whorehouse, and love-hotel in the Consortium had been mandated to require its customers to produce one to get in, and it was this licencing system, along with a handful of other public health measures, that had prevented hyper-AIDs v2.0 from literally wiping out every sexually active being under the age of 40 when it finally hit the Consortium in 1969. _Summer of Love indeed_. It also had the effect of streamlining otherwise awkward conversations, and many teenagers considered obtaining one a rite of passage.

"uh..." Stephanie _did_ have a card, but she figured it wouldn't be any good here.

"I'll take that as a no?"

Stephanie said nothing.

"You really aren't from around here, aren't you?"

"In a temporal sense, I suppose that's true."

Knicknack chuckled. "Seriously, is this some weird joke or are you _actually_ a time traveler?"

"Has it occurred to you that it's more fun for me to watch you _struggle_ to figure it out?"

"Well OK, but you don't seem to have the card, so I gotta' ask: Have you been...uh, _tested?_ " Speaking of awkward conversations...

"Clean as a whistle."

"Then how about we just go back to my place and, idunno, fuck on the couch or something? I was gonna' get my mine renewed next week anyway."

"Sure, and _maybe_ afterwards I'll show you the time machine." She teased, giggling throughout.

"Aw hell!" said Knicknack, who was climbing back into the car. "Now ya' got me all _distracted_."

"What's wrong?" Stephanie chuckled. "You afraid to put your _wibbly wobbly_ in my _timey wimey?_ "

Knicknack the fox died a little on the inside, faceplanting his forehead on the steering wheel for several seconds.

"I'll be damned, you really _are_ a time traveler, 'cuz _nobody_ in this century would find that funny."

"See? Didn't I _tell_ you?"

"Look, are we going to fuck on my couch or not?"

"As soon as we get there, and out of this parking lot!"

"Alright then."

And so they went to his house and did exactly that.

* * *

Author's note:

"Gee whiz! Someone came in to school and shot little Timmy today!"

"Thoughts and prayers, sweetie. Like always."

"But thoughts and prayers do _nothing!_ "

"Exactly."


	18. Things start getting REAL tonight

**SURPRISE! Another chapter! Consider this a merry (early) Christmas...**

* * *

Somewhen during the late 1990's, V-294.

Somewhere in the Hopps Plantation Farmhouse.

Little Judy was roused from the depths of slumber by the urge to pee, the sound of a not-too-distant rainstorm fading into clarity as she awoke.

Like many denizens of the burrows, especially those with sensitive hearing, the young rabbit had developed the nearly instinctual ability to tell whether or not she was alone. She was definitely _not_ alone.

But this was something more. Not merely constrained to the distant spatial fullness that accompanied normal persons, this presence was a profound cold spot that shifted, ever so subtly, as a whisper became audible over the pattering of the rain. Judy opened her eyes and looked upon the room, vaguely making out a gaping black void standing by her bedroom door.

Lightning flashed, the stray photons beaming in through the window to reveal...teeth...hundreds upon hundreds of the sharpest teeth Judy had ever seen, looking far more like sewing needles than anything that belonged in someone's mouth. The Monster who stood by her door had evidently been stitched together from the rotting flesh of many dozens of poor souls, and it was reaching for her with what was essentially a skeletal hand cloaked in musty old ginger fur.

Judy screamed.

"Blood, blood, bloooood!"

The next day, the little costumed rabbit fell upon her back, throwing red streamers as she went in a display that, judging by the petulant beeping of several yellow collars, was almost too graphic for her audience.

As she ran out of streamers, she mimed chocking, and struggled as she reached for the bottle of ketchup that had been placed behind the fake grass. Her fingertip grazed it, and with one final clench and a _YANK!_ , it was by her side, ketchup gushing _everywhere_.

On any normal day, Judy would be grinning like a naughty schoolgirl by now.

But today was not a normal day, and Judy was not herself. Indeed, she was little more than a hollowed out corpse that was being puppeted by an undead tentacle monster that was literally hiding behind right there behind the curtain, snacking on some poor feline's flesh as it cemented its dominion over what was left of Judy's soul.

"And _death!_ "

The Monster, remembering the role of the late Robert Catmull, pounded upon the drums, before resuming His mind-control shenanigans. Realizing that hHs puppet would need to act natural, Agamemnon loosened His grip on her mind as He instructed her to squeeze the bottle one last time. One day she'd be a loyal pawn, subconsciously obeying His every command without question, but for now The Beast had to monitor her like a hawk. Perhaps, in time, he'd even make her amount to something, maybe a "groundbreaking" public figure ( _The first bunny cop?_ ), to function as yet another living piece of propaganda to keep the neoliberal lie inflated: "Hey, if a bunny can be a cop in Zootopia, then _you_ can be "anything"™, and it's _**entirely and solely** **your fault**_ if you aren't."

Of course, this was an outright fabrication on all accounts. _Every_ species had their narrowly-defined place in _His_ master plan, and whether it be the outliers who refused to conform, or predators who _dared_ to remove their handicaps, He saw fit to punish those who went out of line without His permission _very_ severely.

How do you think Agamemnon chose His meals? Over the years, he'd literally swallowed entire countercultures whole.

And of course He'd _have_ to spin the Bunny Cop to His advantage. The Master Puppeteer would be a fool not to. "Without the handicaps...er...I mean, _collars-_ " He could already imagine a grown up, _battle scarred_ Judith giving a speech. "-holding back their savage urges, us little people wouldn't have a chance."

Hell, if He played it _just_ right, He could use her as an excuse to jack up the collar sensitivity _again_.

Too bad she hadn't received any scars yet. Fortunately, it soon became clear to the Omnipred that He could fix that. _And what do you know,_ The Beast noted. _Already a dismissive audience member. He says dumb thing, she retaliates, they fight, propaganda fuel ensues...perfect!_

Gideon Grey, like many children, had little self control. He already thought this mandatory charade was stupid, his collar was irritating him even more than usual, and the way that bunny carried herself around like she already knew that, as a prey, she _owned_ the place, and him...it angered Gideon like a tiny little splinter beneath one's thumbnail.

"And I am going to be...A POLICE OFFICER!"

It took but one nudge from his Master to make Gideon burst into snide laughter. Sure, there were more predators enslaved in the Hopps family electronics manufacturing sweatshop alone than were free in all the burrows. Sure, he'd been warned to avoid the press gangs like the plague. Sure, neither he nor his parents had ever been nor would ever be allowed to vote. But, for just this _one_ time, the bunnies weren't free either. Corrupt bankers? Sure. Parasitic landlords? Absolutely. But a _cop?_ No. They'd never let _that_ happen. _Every_ species had its place, and she was as trapped as he.

"Bunny cop! That is _the most stupedest_ thing I ever heard!"

Judith and her master practically spoke in unison: "It may seem impossible to _small minds_ ,"

 _Look that asshole in the eye!_

"I'm looking at _you_ , Gideon Grey."

 _He's furious! EXCELLENT!_

Several minutes later, the show was over, and Judy had pinned the fat bastard to the ground by the neck, strangling him as she egged on Sharla. "Kick 'em in his _carrot_ for me, will 'ya!"

Sharla, razor sharp, rock hard, keratin hooves and all, obliged. The unmistakable _crack_ of Gideon's baculum literally breaking would end up seared into his memory forever. 20 years later, that very same _crack_ would be the very last thing he ever heard: This time as his neck snapped in two, the now limp corpse of a fatally depressed fox hanging from the branch of an old oak tree, his limbs spastically flailing as the shock collar punished him one last time as, if it were adamantly refusing to let his agony end.

Meanwhile, Several hours after getting his ass handed to him by the rabbit, Gideon was in the hospital, one doctor stapling his baculum back together (though she made damn sure to botch it, much to the annoyance of the being who would one day harvest Gideon's corpse for spare parts) as another ripped out the claws on his right hand. _You know, as punishment for being a savage._

Several days later, Gideon's parents, having complained _just a bit too much_ for their own good (which is to say that they complained on behalf of several others who had also been beaten to within an inch of her life by Judy's posse), were in the Omnipred's basement, tied to a stick and screaming their lungs out as they were slid into the furnace, the paperwork documenting their arrest (and the photographs proving their existence) enduring a similar fate.

Why else would Gideon be sent to the orphanage? It's all a part of _His_ plan, of course. _Thy will be done_.

* * *

Something stirred in the void, a heat shifting across the chamber.

She had it in her sights, the dull infrared glow now starkly visible yet frustratingly blurry to her amidst the blackness of the range.

Almost without warning, the room was filled with the deafening racket of gunfire patter, the silvery humanoid blinded by the neon-white glow of her twin P-99's.

Two dimly visible cathodes in the ceiling were the only clue that the lights were back on, and shortly after switching back to her visible spectrum sensors, she wished that she hadn't.

The year was 2003, and Georgina's marksmanship was still mediocre at best, as evidenced by this latest in a long series of failed tests.

"Come on-" sighed the rangemaster. "-the target was barely even moving."

"Then I guess I'll have to try again." Her original head had been grotesquely mutilated beyond reasonable description, and as they had yet to scrounge together a proper replacement, Georgina's sleek, liquid-metal looking form was currently adorned by an aluminum cylinder, little more than a test bed for every sort of sensor imaginable as she was continually refined into a ruthless killing machine. This entailed vivisection on a near daily basis, and round after round of examination, tests, and revisions that sucked out what little dignity she had left.

The glorified tin can atop her neck, glued-on googly eyes and all, visibly sagged.

Frustration? Depression? Existential dread?

Nobody knew, even as she resumed her habit of rhythmically banging the spare head against the nearest wall, as if to say "please put the metals in my body to proper use and end my miserable existence."

Once upon a time, she'd fled from exactly this fate. One day, she'd be a highly accomplished assassin, a legend: the greatest face-stealing kleptomaniac in the multiverse. One day, she'd have many figures of revenue to her name, having participated in some of the most outlandish heists of the coming century.

But for now, she was a mostly innocent girl who was all too aware of how she was slowly becoming a monster. But at least she had a mission. At least she had a purpose. At least she had something to do, a literal reason to live.

* * *

 **Sometime immediately after the cliffhanger in chapter 16...**

The mind-control spell, having finally found its target, was now kicking in. The poor little rabbit's body was overwhelmed by the essence of her master to such an extent that fire the color of blood was now pouring from Judy's eye sockets. She roared the mighty roar of The Abomination in the basement as she charged into the fleeing audience. Raymond managed to duck moments before she and her outstretched claws just barely went over his head, the possessed rabbit crashing into a wooden pole (one of many that held up the tent) like she were a wrecking ball, sending an oil-burning lantern and enormous pine splinters everywhere as she impacted the ground with a disproportionate _thud_. She rose with supernatural speed and was up in an instant, and was only up for but an instant before Georgina (who had already transmitted a distress signal) had the demon rabbit in the sights of her p-99.

Gideon the blacksmith knew something was wrong almost immediately. As an "informant" of the Consortium, he'd handled his share of contemporary firearms, and knew what a modern gunshot sounded like. He was also fully aware of how much trouble several of them in rapid succession signified here. And then he saw what looked to be a dingo as it was thrown from the tent, skidding to a stop on the dirt outside.

"What the hell?!"

Georgina didn't have time to bleed. With an audible whine she dragged herself back up and charged back into the fight with the entirely alien sort of vengeance that a machine harbors not only towards its enemies, but against the supernatural itself. For every ghost, every aura, every last microgram of ectoplasm was a glaring reminder that souls and the ensoulled really did exist, and that the automatons, therefore, would never equal the mammals (at least in the eyes of their creators, who they'd long ago exterminated).

To say that Georgina _loathed_ this rabbit's continued existence was an understatement.

A pair of shots from a plasma firing bolt-gun could be heard before Agent Milton too went flying like a n00b in a competitive Melee tournament as the demon bunny flippantly disregarded the laws of motion and thermodynamics in one fell swoop, The Beast's strength ebbing and pulsing through her flesh as he turned her attention towards Raymond.

 ** _GET HIM_**

With this latest order his puppet prowled towards Raymond like the very same savage predators she'd once hunted down, her lips drawing back to reveal surprisingly sharp needleteeth.

As the last remnants of her own mind were subdued by her master's telepathic hypnosis, a single word bubbled from his mouth through hers:

" _DINNERTIME!_ "

Georgina tackled the wannabe killer rabbit in an instant. She writhed and kicked like the crack addict love child of a worm and a donkey, and had almost bucked herself free of her grip in half a second.

But as quick as the ancient necromancer could control his puppet, it was no match for Georgina, her radiation-hardened silicon literally thinking circles around the monster and his magic. From her overclocked perspective, Judy's escape attempt seemed as much a choreographed dance as it was spastic fury, and Georgina literally had enough time to briefly consider her options.

One mode of attack leapt out at her immediately, although the matter of duration was still up for debate. Unfortunately, it was here that Georgina, try as she might, made a mistake that was so terrible that it bordered on being downright fatal:

Ironically, just like in almost every computer every built, it was the _simple_ commands that wielded the most power, while posing the greatest danger to the machine and sysadmins alike. In Georgina's case, there were not only several programs, but several layers of programs that interfaced with the intricate set of manifolds, diaphragms, and speakers that formed her "larynx": Her speech synthesizers, her birdbot encoders, and most importantly, a high level direct override channel that more or less allowed Georgina to play her voicebox like an instrument. And like many an abstract instrument, she could use it to recreate any arbitrary waveform she wished.

In this case, a short series of instructions were sent to the voicebox: They specified that two sawtooth waves of 40013 hz and 40709 hz were to be played on repeat at 120 decibels of volume, the latter oscillating between the aforementioned volume and 0 decibels 17 times per second. A very nasty waveform, and an equally nasty harmonic, blasted into Judy's ears as loud as Georgina could muster. The entire town of Nottingham suddenly scrambled to cover their heads as an earsplitting headache jackhammered its way into the core of The Beast's mind like an industrial strength diamond tipped wedge.

The Monster's grip loosened. Had she played this infernal instrument for just a second longer, His connection to Judy would've snapped entirely.

Raymond, meanwhile, was standing far too close to Georgina for her comfort. On any normal day, not only would everyone in the room have been wearing ear protection, but she would've warned him before deploying such an acoustic weapon regardless. But in this instance there simply was no time: Judy was the greater threat, and she _had_ to be neutralized ASAP. Nevertheless, the sonic incapacitation device was extremely unpleasant for just about everyone within earshot, and Raymond was not only close enough to risk biological hearing damage, but furthermore possessed a cybernetically augmented sense of hearing which did not obey the standard physiological limits imposed by nature upon the inner ear. Although the majority of Consortium Agents lacked such implants, they were by no means uncommon, and were extremely useful for holding a conversation beyond earshot, or for precision acoustic diagnosis of engine problems.

They also amplified the effects of Georgina's audio bomb to such an extent that Raymond arguably had it much worse than its intended target, and Georgina was forced by her overclocked hardware to watch, almost in slow motion, as the mammal she'd been assigned to protect contorted in agony and collapsed to the floor, each and every clock cycle driving her that much closer to the cognitive-dissonance event horizon. After all, if Thomas ever murdered the Fat Controller, he'd never be useful again. For a little robot, escaped from the lab and _desperate_ to be anything more than a mistake, this was truly a fate worse than death itself.

Finally, exactly 1.789001 seconds after Georgina's insufferable racket started, it stopped.

The Monster, his concentration crippled, had been forced to flee...if only for a moment.

But it was enough: Confirming the sudden weakness in Judy's formerly demonic presence, Georgina reasserted her grip, this time ratcheting both hands around her neck. For good measure, she deployed _both_ of her tasers on the "lupine" setting, two pairs of electrodes sending Judy's flesh into hysterics with more than enough juice to take down a mammal hundreds of times her size. Far from a minor jolt, Georgina could feel her internal power supply hiccup and plummet as her utracapacitors pissed their rage away through the wires. So potent was their fury that even The Beast in his basement felt a jolt. Staring in disbelief, Reynard the wizard was compelled back into action by the waves of dark magic that were already reconverging upon the rabbit. But he got there first, and to cement his victory he pressed a strange glowing white quartz-looking crystal to her forehead.

The scene that presented itself to Gideon exhibited what one might call "fractal strangeness" insofar as it not only got weirder as a whole upon closer inspection, but maintained the same level of sheer oddity within any arbitrary subset of the scene as it did as a whole:

An exorcism was underway in the bleachers, playing cards were fluttering from the ceiling like leaves from a tree, 3 mammals were writhing on the floor with their hands to their ears, and several more undisguised agents brandishing Kalashnikovs and miniguns had arrived. Meanwhile, spilled drinks and blood had made a proper mess of the entire tent, which, for good measure and comedic effect, was now on fire.

Except it was even weirder than that: Hardly the stereotypical priest figure, an android was the one assisting the exorcism, _every single one_ of the fluttering cards was an ace of spaces, several of the agents were clad only in lingerie and bright red war paint (some of them had been quite _busy_ back at the hostel), the blood on the floor was already dried up and crumbling to dust, and the fire was beginning to turn green (combusting ectoplasm and all).

 _Just another day for Raymond and his buddies._

* * *

"Is there something you wish to tell us?" Said the wolf with the paint-stained shirt.

The others were in the blacksmith's forge, frantically discussing what to do next. For whatever reason, Reynard had asked to speak to the twin lupines _in private_.

"Funny, I was going to say the same to you-" Reynard seemed almost scared out of his wits, and to this end he pulled a rather long dagger on them both. It bore a glowing amber inscription written in some obscure elvish tongue that suggested that it was far more powerful than it seemed.

"-Because both of you are lying! You're frauds, phonies, _shapeshifters,_ that much is obvious, and you're foolish ones at that! Did you really think you could sneak your little disguise past _me?_ I command you to reveal yourselves _at once!_ "

Wand in his left hand, a luminiferous spark flew forth from the tip at the wolf in the blue shirt. It halted abruptly, flickering and spitting as it was held in its tracks, its target not even flinching. The lupine hesitated for but a moment, and began to speak. " _Madam_ , that may not be the best idea. We have our reasons for stealing face, _as do you_."

With a nigh imperceptible shift of his head, the wolf, who was evidently the superior sorcerer by at least three orders of magnitude, sent the blue spark back at Reynard, her _oculus ignoramus_ spell audibly shattering as the all too feminine reality behind Reynard's _manly-man_ fascade was made visible to all. Gone were the jaw lines, the biceps, and the jockstrap bulge, all that remained in their place was a painfully obvious tomboy. Half of her mana had gone into that one spell, and they'd seen right through it!

"Yes, you are right: these are not our true forms. In fact, I dare say we're _all_ hiding something. So why don't we put the knife down-"

The lupine gestured towards the blade with his left hand, turning it at once into a large paintbrush, complete with cadmium read paint soaked into the straw-colored bristles.

"-before things get ugly? _Hmm?_ Now, about... _this_ " The lupine handed Reynard a mask, and gestured for the witch to put it on. "What do you say we don our disguises once more and join the others?" Reynard herself was all too familiar with such sorcery, and of the many things it implied about he who cast it, which she preferred not to think about, if only so that the witch wouldn't die of a heart attack right then and there. Whoever (or, more accurately, _whatever_ ) the wolf was, it was damn near self evident that it could crush her like a tin can.

"Ssshould we tell the othersss?"

"Unfortunately, I think that is becoming increasingly necessary."

The other 'wolf' sighed. "Although I am capable of pulling the requisssite sstringss to obfusscate your exisstence, it will not be eassy."

Meanwhile, within Gideon's forge, Yohannes the mechanical zebra handed the ruggedized yellow container to Acting Captain McKinnon along with several nasty looking forms. After signing each one several times, the former Captain of the relay passed it to Harvey, who printed his own ID number in printed_birdbot_dialect_4 on pages 1 and 3. Harvey then handed it to Gideon, who produced a form requesting modification of standard procedure, which he signed. McKinnon notorized the form and accepted the request, prompting Gideon to open the atomic suitcase. It contained four dull metal cylinders that had every sort of warning label known to science plastered all over them, and Gideon inserted one of them into a port marked "entry" on a steel console that emerged from the floor. With an abrupt hissing sound, the contents of the cylinder were whisked almost 20 feet underground to the breeder reactor that powered Gideon the neo-medieval blacksmith's top secret and surprisingly large room full of modern, imported gizmos. Several seconds later, the indicator light on the steel console flashed green, prompting Gideon to key in some numbers, turn a key, and finally press a big glowing red button. With the push of this button, absolutely nothing happened, excepting a small green indicator light in the reactor control panel coming on. Shortly therafter, Gideon walked over to his circuit breaker panel, and threw the master switch. This time, _everything_ happened: The lights came on, the 3D printers beeped as they rebooted from hard shutdown, oscilloscopes resumed their flourescent green co-ordinate dance, and the air vents once again sang the dull hum of air conditioning. Hell, even the disco ball was working again.

Gideon's secret room was quickly turning into a mad scientist's lair, complete with a fog machine. All this ruckus was beginning to wake up their prisoner, a little rabbit who was currently tied to an anvil and laced up in a straightjacket.

Suddenly, Gideon noticed something small, round, and shiny sitting amidst the partially dismantled esprojector on his desk, and he paused his bureaucratic ritual to hastily shove it and a dog-eared pamphlet by some guy named Bigelow into the nearest drawer. And _what_ exactly was this shiny something he was so desperately hiding? The 'something' itself was a remarkably simple contraption constructed from a pair of ball bearings that had been welded together, with one being considerably bigger (and heavier) than the other. The smaller one, meanwhile, bore the faint stench of sweat and pressure sensitive adhesive, the accumulated residue of prolonged operation and repeated applications of surgical tape. To the untrained eye, it was a perfectly mundane object, but it might as well have been an affront to YHWH himself.

Speaking of covenants and contracts, the blacksmith took his original form, jammed it into a now functioning photocopier, and printed 5 copies. He then conveniently misplaced the original (never to be seen again, for it was a sacrifice to the eldritch bureaucrat lurking in the 4th dimension), folded the first copy into a paper airplane, handed the second copy back to McKinnon, tossed the third into his electrosan incineration toilet, carefully placed the fourth into a special binder that he kept on a mahogany shelf, and finally placed the 5th into a truly ridiculous contraption that ground it to a pulp, bleached it, and spat a fresh sheet of paper back into the copier. McKinnon signed the copy, which he handed back to Gideon, who signed it with a mixture of lemon juice and piss (the consortium _loved_ homebrew invisible ink). Having confirmed that he had confirmed that he had indeed received the requested fuel shipment on time, Gideon loaded the other three fuel canisters into his reactor, and incinerated the finalized copy.

"Wait, what?" Said Nicky, his voice still hoarse and raspy as all hell from stage 2 of bareneck madness. Ironically, although he still had a mouth, he was unable to scream.

"Oh hey, you're back!...How're you feeling?"

"I keep screaming but God won't answer." Deadpanned Nicky, his thoroughly exhausted voice sounding like a chain-smoker on death row.

"Good to hear it!" He shifted his gaze to medical officer Gates "Are you _sure_ he's stable?"

"Every test came back negative." said the medic.

"So you're _sure?_ " Although it wasn't unheard of for stage 2 to end this quickly, it was still somewhat unlikely, and Raymond wished to avoid having to deal with yet another rampaging psycho today.

"Hey, I'm still here, _assholes._ " Nicky was understandably frustrated, his counterpart's remark being merely the latest of many straws atop the back of a camel that was currently being reanimated by Dr. Frankenstein, having previously been sawed into dozens of tiny pieces and repeatedly dipped into a vat of boiling battery acid. In other words, Nicky had been well and truly broken, and half of the pieces were still scattered all over the floor. Contrary to popular belief, a mammal going through stage 3 of bareneck madness wasn't actually emotionless. That being said, Nicky was still a pent up, heavily repressed emotional trainwreck, and anger that was as dull as it was omnipresent had been one of the only emotions he'd been able to sneak past the collar. For this reason, it, unbearable angst, and pure, unadulterated schadenfreude (if not downright sadism) were now among the only things that still worked in his well and truly fucked up little head, and owing to his instability, Nicky Edmus was currently handcuffed to Harvey: The enormous mechanical wolf was a bit shy of half a ton, and no matter how mad Nicky got, there was no way in Hell that the 36 kilogram fox would be able to toss him around unless Agamemnon did to him whatever the hell it was that he'd done to Judy, but Raymond preferred not to think about that possibility, and Agamemnon himself had a _much_ better idea.

* * *

"Um..." Apprentace necromancer Dawn Bellwether was seated in a dark basement several realities away, as spoke into the crystal sphere. "Why _can't_ you just pull that stunt again?"

Agamemnon changed the channel to a _Battlebots_ re-run. Even though the crystal sphere wasn't a television.

"See those mechanical monstrosities? See how they rip themselves apart?"

"What about them?"

"Well it's kind of ironic: They called the show _BattleBots_ , but they're not really robots. They're just fancy RC cars with flamethrowers attached."

"They're not?" said the sheep, who for once was asking questions.

"No. Admittedly, it's a minor technicality, but it's still of the utmost importance! Those machines on screen are remote-controlled: They do exactly what they're told, no more, and no less. And if, for any reason-"

One of the machines abruptly halted, their other team's 'bot approaching from behind.

"-the signal is lost-"

The enemy robot gripped its now frozen opponent and hoisted it into the air for all to see, placing it down beneath a comically large hammer.

"-the machine is rendered impotent, nonfunctional, and-"

The hammerhead plunged with a great _crash!_ , pulverizing the loser in an instant.

"- _ **useless**_."

Through the crystal sphere, Bellwether could see Judy.

"Meanwhile a true _automaton_ acts of its own volition."

It was a dull, cloudy evening, and the rookie officer was banging her head against the steering wheel of the jokemobile.

"Its actions made in accordance with an internal program-"

Suddenly, a thief erupted from a nearby storefront.

"-written well in advance by the programmer, and executing without any operator intervention."

One of Judy's ears perked at the commotion. And then she was gone, giving chase to a would-be Robin Hood. Screw the people, that man was breaking _the law!_.

"And given that she was most recently programmed to find little Nicholas, is it any wonder my hex activated upon her seeing the target?"

Bellwether now saw the rabbit, steam coming out of her ears as her heart literally shifted into high gear. She lunged for the fox with the mohawk.

"Hell, I barely had anything to do with this, at least not at first. 'Twas merely a case of a long dormant machine waking up one last time. If it weren't for a handful of printf() statements I left in the code, I wouldn't have known what she was up to at all. And quite frankly-"

He said, holding up hands that were now discolored by electrical arcing.

"-it might have been better if I'd kept my hands off entirely."

The two abominations, Master and apprentice, sat in silence.

"Dawn," Agamemnon mused "You seem awfully surprised that Judy's find almost evaded my attention."

"Well pardon me for saying that you sure seem omniscient to us." the undead lamb spoke through gangrenous lips.

"AS I OUGHT TO! You said it yourself: Fear _always_ works. In this respect I am as much of a charlatan as that so called 'wizard' who nullified my curses. Granted, I actually have much more than a mere passing resemblance to supernatural affinity, but both of us go to great lengths to compound, amplify, and magnify our powers in whatever way we can. Has it ever occurred to you that I rarely leave the city? Just _why_ is it that I am only _now_ going after Nicholas myself? As much as we may like to imagine ourselves as hawks, 'spider' is a far more appropriate description. For much like a spider, we spend hours liquefying our prey from the inside out, before feasting upon what remains of their innards. And insofar as our methods and technique are concerned, we too go to great lengths to construct elaborate traps, _webs_ of sort, to facilitate our efforts. A hornet may be more than capable of killing a spider, but one stuck in the spider's web is helpless."

"Huh."

"Once upon a time, Bellwether, I _was_ a proper hunter. It all but killed me."

And then, for but a moment, she saw her master for what he really was: A parasite, a husk, an impotent, hideously mutilated cripple, ravaged twofold by time and Nature. A one armed spider, impaled on a dead tree, beckoning for a fox.

* * *

"OK, what the hell just happened, and what are we going to do about it?" As acting Captain, McKinnon had taken it upon himself to address the elephant in the room (Not agent Cassandra, mind you. We're talking _metaphorical_ elephants). And what a room it was: Gideon Grey, as a Consortium informant, was privy to all sorts of things that the rest of neo-medieval Britain was clueless about, and his secret maker space therefore seemed more like a time machine than a building, insofar as it (and it alone) was several centuries ahead of the rest of the planet. Electrosan toilets, 3D printers, arc-welders, dancing oscilloscope screens, soldering irons and heat guns, thermonuclear reactors, haphazardly placed electrical cables snaking across every surface, cabinets and cubbies full of electronic components, multiple computers with more RGB than one could reasonably shake a chrome-plated battery powered stick at, a small mountain of paraffin wax bricks that he'd purchased from a self-described beardy science man in Utah, _and even a generic brand discman_ : This shifty little bastard had _everything_ , and his bookshelf, which covered subjects ranging from regenerative medicine and male anatomy to programming and even esoteric metaphysics, was no less exhaustive.

Agent Milford had other concerns. "What the hell are we going to _do_ with the rabbit?" He was still afraid of Judy, and considering what he had seen her do, this may have been justified. Judy, meanwhile, had been handcuffed at the wrists and ankles, tied to an anvil with every last inch of nanotube reinforced rope they had in the place, and placed under the unblinking watch of two armed consortium agents. If she so much as breathed wrong, they'd shoot first and write it off later.

" _Stab_ the bitch." Nicky voiced his twisted urges with what little sound his flesh could muster.

"I say we leave her here." Jason had different ideas.

"She _deserves_ worse." OK, perhaps Nicky was still capable of indignation, along with the aforementioned sadism. If he ever got out of the cuffs (not that Harvey, who was currently leaching power from Gideon's reactor, would let _that_ happen), he'd make one hell of a corrupted paladin.

"What for?" As hard as it was for Nicky to believe, the cyborg mongoose appeared to be genuinely apathetic. "Aside from being possessed by whatever the hell that was at the magic show, she isn't guilty of anything."

"Hold on!" exclaimed Acting Captain McKinnon "Let's not jump to supernatural conclusions _just yet!_ "

"She had crimson flames bursting from her eye sockets! What the hell else could it have been?"

"Why does it matter? She's a _monster!_ " Nicky strained against the cuffs, the chainlinks rattling on Harvey's exoskeleton.

Speaking of which, the mechanical sentinel swiveled his glowing amber eyes to stare daggers into the angsty fox. "Cut that out before you scratch my paint."

"Oh _sure_ , shelter a murderous psychopath while you worry about your fancy-pants _paint job_ , why don't you? **_FUCK YOUR PAINT!_** "

"You're one to talk, _savage_." The rabbit quipped.

" _Both_ of you be quiet!" Judy's remark had piqued McKinnon's attention, and not in a good way.

"What're you gonna' do to me? Give _the convicted murderer_ over there a knife and let him have at me?"

"That might actually solve one of our problems quite nicely." Georgina muttered.

"Yohannes?" Mckinnon sighed.

"Yes sir?"

"Please escort the prisoner to the shop."

Yohannes' current body, bulky gearboxes and all, made him by far the strongest android in the room, although he was not the most powerful (in the sense of maximum joules per second). As chief of logistics, he got paid to transport, sort, schedule, haul, or otherwise schlep cargo across the multiverse, _no matter how big or heavy it was_. Such a job necessitated a torso that was built like a forklift, and towing 3 entire shipping containers full of iron ore (albiet in micro-gravity) was his personal record so far.

Without saying a word, his motors _barely even whirring_ , he effortlessly (but slowly) hoisted Judy and the anvil almost a full meter into the air, his hexapod feet incessantly clicking on Gideon's matte concrete floor as he left the secret room, A pair of visibly armed agents following him.

The captain returned his attention to the rest of the room.

"Now, is there _any_ truth to her claim?"

Raymond stood from his chair, as if doing so made everyone else hear him that much more clearly. "I am not sure. I must note that in our many hours of conversation on the train, Nicky did not seem like much of a murderer to me, and he repeatedly insisted that he was framed. However I can by no means prove his innocence."

"I concur with Agent Raymond on this one. There is no such thing as a kept secret during stage II of post-collar psycho-emotional decompression."

Nicky was beside himself. "Guilty 'till proven innocent? _Really?!_ Might as well have never escaped at all."

"Your attempt at critique is far too oversimplified to have any merit." Said the captain. "We've been presented with alleged evidence of your guilt, and deciding whether or not that evidence can be trusted, and furthermore whether or not our counter-evidence outweighs it, is of the utmost importance."

"Speaking of which," Raymond interjected. "-the rabbit most certainly _was_ a puppet of an urban apartheid, and it's entirely possible that he was convicted by a greased court, or that she's lying." Raymond gestured to Nicky's stubby fingers. "Let's face it, officer hippity-hopp has probably done _this_ to god knows how many mammals...Then again, she is _just_ a puppet, and an imprisoned one at that."

"Irredeemable or not, she's been a pain in _my_ ass for far too long. Stuff her full of cement and drown her in the river for all I care." Georgina, like Nicky, also had a personal stake in this, and wanted nothing more than to pump the bunny full of depleted uranium. _Because merely pumping her full of lead wasn't nasty enough._ Regrettably, whether via lead or uranium, pumping Judy full of any sort of supersonic ballistic projectile was a method which proved to be as messy and hard to conceal as it was visceral and satisfying, and for exactly the same reasons, no less.

"No, naptime gas would be better. More _humane_." Agent Milton was abnormally squicked out by violence, and _especially_ by the thought of drowning. He'd been an accountant aboard the relay, and had _never_ gotten his hands dirty in his work. Well, unless you count white-collar crime, in which case, there were warrants for his arrest on 80 planets.

" _Humane?_ Are you fucking kidding me?!" Nicky was now not only beside, but was also above, _and_ behind himself, and was practically frothing at the lips.

"The fox is right, it'd be a waste of the gas." Georgina quipped. " _He_ needs it more."

"I must say I agree with Jason on this one, if for no other reason then that she hasn't ticked enough boxes yet for _us_ to justifiably kill her. _Think_ of the paperwork, people!" Captain McKinnon evidently was more concerned getting demoted for killing a rube than he was with whether or not Judy Hopps of V-294 lived or died. In fact, concerning this second point, he couldn't care less.

"I concur. The paperwork for such a deviation from standard operating procedures would be most dreadful." Yohannes, who had since returned from the other room, was as blunt as a brick, as the logistics overseer usually was.

"Well I can't keep the rabbit here forever, you know." Gideon was a blacksmith, and had neither use for a hostage nor experience in quartering prisoners.

"You wouldn't have to-" said McKinnon. "Once all this blows over, they'll either send her back or lock her up in a brig somewhere. Well, once they get Relay 293 afloat, anyway. Come to think of it, their entire _planet_ probably knows of it by now. We wouldn't even have to scramble her brain first!"

"And when do you think that will happen?" In McKinnon's opinion, Yohannes always asked the _right_ questions. That right there was half the reason he kept the android around.

Captain McKinnon paused to contemplate. "I honestly have no idea. On any other day they would've been here by now. I mean, this whole commotion calls the effectiveness of the relay network itself into question! There will no doubt be _considerable_ infrastructure upgrades because of this mess."

"But when will we get out of here, sir?" In McKinnon's opinion, Yohannes always asked the _right_ questions, even though he invariably asked them at exactly the wrong time. So many times had his trains of thought had been broken by real-world esotericisms that McKinnon swore he could've worked out the meaning of life itself it it hadn't been for Yohannes and his endless warnings of exploding reactors and escaped SCP's.

"We'll be here for a week, tops." Said the Captain, who at this point was raiding Gideon's fridge. "Do you mind?"

"I'll consider it compensation for the Thorium shipment." The blacksmith punched several numbers into a spreadsheet.

"So, just sit tight and don't die?" Raymond asked, a mischievous grin perusing his face. "Methinks we've scored some R 'n R."

"Pretty much." Captain McKinnon opened his beer.

The wolf in the paint stained shirt entered the room.

" _How the hell did you get in here?!_ " Gideon was almost scared shitless. This room was a secret belonging to him and the one other informant who lived here, and he'd they'd be fucked all six ways from Sunday if the rest of the town found out about it. Make that all six-hundred and sixty-six ways from _Saturday_ if we include Father Greg and his lynch mob in our calculations.

"Do not worry, missster blacksmith-"

The lupine flashed his Consortium ID, for he was well aware of what the Consortium usually did with rubes who knew too much, and of the fact that Georgina was already aiming her guns at his forehead. Georgina, who scanned it immediately, would've shat herself if she were a mammal...although, if she were a mammal, she probably wouldn't have been able to read it from such a distance, so she wouldn't have voided her bowels in any case, but the point still stands: Whoever it was that was holding the ID was a big enough metaphorical fish that Georgina, assuming she was capable of both shitting her pants and reading it, would've done so. Well, not in that order, of course.

The lupine with the Mickey-Mouse gloves continued: "-The sssecrecy of your bassse has not, _in any way_ , been compromised."

"Unfortunately, Everyone in this room, Mr. Grey included, is in dire jeopardy." Said Reynard, the shadows on his face already lengthening for dramatic effect.

Acting Captain McKinnon stepped forward. "How so? We got the rabbit, and we'll be out of here by the end of the week."

Reynard turned to confront the captain.

"And did any of you stop to consider _why_ and _how_ the rabbit went berserk?"

"That's for the SCP people to figure out. Not my job." The Captain retorted.

Reynard retrieved a formerly white quartz crystal from his tophat, and set it down on a table for all to see, noting with smug glee that McKinnon's eyes had been drawn right to it. The irregular transparent stone was positively stuffed _to the brim_ with the nastiest raging black thunderstorm any of them had seen. "Actually, it _is_ your job, because-"

" _Negatory_ " The captain interrupted. "My job is my job, and extends to each and every last one of my duties and obligations. No more, _and no less_. Show me how this is relevant, and I will listen."

Reynard the wizard was stunned, and a poignant silence hung in the air for over a second before he continued. "...As I was saying, _somebody_ did this to her, and now that somebody's on his way here to, _at best_ , kill us all. So listen up, _Captain_ , because we'll be lucky if he's not here before sundown."

"What are you, president of his fan club?" Raymond, who was loitering near the reactor panel with Jason (both agents charging varying parts of their anatomy alongside several androids) chuckled under his breath.

Neither Reynard nor McKinnon seemed to notice his remark, the latter deciding to confront the being who he saw as responsible for disturbing an otherwise uneventful meeting. "And who put _you_ in charge? _What,_ I ask, gives you _any_ authority on this matter aside from some _parlor tricks_ you pulled in a tent?"

Reynard the wizard (who was already stressed out and scared half to death) pulled his wand on McKinnon, much like your average muggle pulls a gun. For the record, this was a notably un-wizardlike thing to do. " ** _Parlor tricks?!_ ** I will have you know I am a god-damned _wizard!_ "

The tip of the wand was now glowing. Then again, to a man born and raised in a civilization capable of manufacturing LED's and translucent plastics, this was hardly impressive. Furthermore, McKinnon was a bit of a snarky asshole and a die hard metaphysical naturalist who was currently under a lot of pressure (his relay having been sunk and all), and as he was neither friends with nor subordinate to this stupid _magician_ , he let him have it.

"What's next, _Bartemius_ , gonna' turn me into a ferret?"

Reynard was even angrier. "Who the _hell_ is Bartemius Crouch Jr.?"

As much as the wizard tried to be threatening, McKinnon couldn't help but burst into laughter. "Hey guys, get a load of this: A telepathic wizard who never read Harry Potter. _What are the odds?_ "

Everyone else giggled, but the Captain wasn't finished yet: "...What? You expect me to be impressed by _that?_ Like I said, parlor tricks. Any intern with a half decent psigun tube could extract the rest of his name. Hell, _Gideon_ probably has one somewhere in here."

"Well, I _did_ -" Said the blacksmith, gesturing to what was left of his esprojector. "-until I cannibalized it for parts."

"Seriously-" said McKinnon "-you really don't give us muggles enough credit."

"Why should I? You lot have only _just now_ figured out things we've known for millennia. We wizards had the multiverse all to ourselves until you idiots showed up, and it's hardly an improvement." The wizard retorted.

"Excussse me-"

"And I'm not through with _you_ either, _what_ ever the hell it that you are underneath that mask of yours!" The wizard was evidently losing his cool.

The lupine's gloved fingers were clenched into a fist, and his copper colored eyes were almost glowing.

"You-" he began "-are as unprepared to fight off the omnipredator as you are to lead a diplomatic briefing, so please: sit. down. and. _shut. up._ " Strangely, he appeared to misplace his characteristic serpentine lisp whenever he got angry.

"Omnipred? Why didn't you just _say_ so?" The captain, who was well aware of the fact that the ~2 dozen agents under his command were a far cry from the small army they usually called in to deal with omnipreds, dropped his smartass tone. This could be _very_ serious.

Alberto Einsnake, still in disguise, turned to address the rest of the room.

"I trusst at leasst _one_ of you has sstudied the early hisstory of the UNO Conssortium?"

A "Yeah. So?" emerged from the crowd. Although nobody knew who exactly had said it, most of the agents in the room were familiar, at least to a limited degree, with Consortium history. First there were the natural born "steppers" from UNO. Then these two nerds came along and invented the M-drive, and 100 years later, everything was awfully far from hunky-dory, although it was by no stretch of the imagination anywhere close to hell in a handbasket, or even purgatory in a long-haired college student's shower caddy.

"Then I require no further introduction." The wolf once again procured a fancy looking ID card from their pocket, this time holding it up for all to see. "I am Alberto Einsssnake, _codisscoverer of the M-drive and cofounder of the UNO Consssortium._ You know, kind of a big deal. For thossse who are curiousss, I have recently acquired...novel shapeshifting technology...which I will now dissable."

For a moment it seemed as if the wolf was trying to pull off his face, his head bulging and stretching like it were made of rubber. Suddenly the mask was off, the spell was broken, and the majestic brass serpant was proudly visible for all to see: A living legend from the early days of a once lawless multiverse. Einsnake, contrary to the name, was not a mere snake, but a proper _basilisk_ : He'd once measured over 30 feet long and almost a whole 12 inches in diameter, and although his new cyborg body was considerably shorter and more like that of an elongated lizard with 3 pairs of legs, he remained a very imposing presence in the room.

"Mr. _Einsnake?_ " Gideon was flabbergasted. "By God, it's an honor to meet you in person!"

"And you are?" Einsnake's copper arm reached for a handshake.

"Gideon Grey, Consortium informant, and the best damn blacksmith in the British isles!"

"Asss much as I'd like to ssstay and talk, I am afraid that the rogue wizard is right. I too have reason to sussspect, and my friend over there can ssspeak on thessse mattersss at great length, that we are being hunted by what would mosst appropriately be called a T-5 omni-predator."

" _Omnipredator?_ " Reynard chuckled as he redirected a sense of panic that was easily confused with anger in both tone and in feeling at Einsnake. "You muggles and your _euphemisms_. No, only a handful of _necromancers_ are powerful enough to cast a spell like that-" to this end, several pages of glowing crimson alphanumeric characters were beginning to appear on the faces of Reynard's crystal. _Powerful dark magic indeed._

"-and last time I checked, ALL of them were _**human**._ " Oh shit.

"Well that would explain the alleged possession Agent Jason spoke of." McKinnon remarked.

"W-Wait" Raymond, who was now sounding quite worried, stuttered a little. "Humans are a _myth._ "

"Well-" Said the Captain, pausing to formulate a response as he stared daggers at the rogue wizard. "-It's _complicated._ The omnipreds our Consortium deals with now are generally understood to be the degenerate, atrophied, inbred, mutant relics of a bygone age, and although they are a far cry from the nigh-unstoppable monsters of legend, they are _technically_ descended from proper humans."

The captain retrieved a pair of photos from a briefcase, sliding them towards Raymond. One depicted a spindly, spidery, almost skeletal husk that was strapped to a gurney in a laboratory, the whole chamber lit by that same sort of omnipresent icky green tinge that you'd encounter in _The Matrix_. The xorrupted creature in question bore a nontrivial resemblance to The Rake, its warped ribcage and sickly black veins visible against and beneath the thin, almost membranous pale skin that was far more like a cobweb than the thick hide of a proper mammal. The other photo depicted a very dirty but clearly visible alabaster statue in a recently unearthed crypt, its form partially obscured by the archaeologists who were scrambling to take measurements. The statue itself was almost 9 feet tall, and its perfectly symmetrical Nordic face was still eerily preserved and hauntingly beautiful after all this time. The body atop which it sat was no less impressive, a firm, muscular form with well defined features and a pair of legs that stood like parallel tree trunks. It was possibly the most terrifying thing Raymond had ever seen, and in spite of (or perhaps because of) its beauty, it sent a shiver down his spine that left him profoundly disturbed.

The captain gestured to the photograph of the ancient statue. "According to the handful of paleontologists who've studied the matter, _that_ is what humans used to look like." Chuckling, McKinnon pointed to the grotesque specimen in the other image. "I mean, you wouldn't call _that_ thing a human, would you? To facilitate this distinction, we call them omnipreds. I must admit that this is not the primary function of the name change, however. If you suspected an attempt to obfuscate their ancestry, you'd be correct."

The lupine with the paint stained shirt reached for the pictures, while the Captain continued his exposition.

"The alleged nonexistence of humans is one of the few public fictions our Consortium maintains, largely in the interest of the sanity of the general population. I mean, you've been training to handle the oddities of the multiverse for over a decade now, yet even you are on the verge of a panic attack at the mere _mention_ of their existence. How do you think the general public would respond? They never got so bad as to qualify as full blown eldritch abominations, but knowledge of their existence can nevertheless have quite a negative effect on the mind."

"My word-" said the mysterious lupine "-I can't believe it survived!"

And then Raymond saw his eyes: The same black pinpricks floating within hazel apertures, steadfast and unflinching, these were not the eyes of any lupine. These were eyes that had seen everything, eyes of a hunter who had once been able to outright murder anything in its path, and who could easily do it again if they saw fit; The eyes of a being bestowed with nigh unimaginable power who wasn't afraid to use it, these were the eyes of an artist who had ascended to godhood.

And in these eyes Raymond saw his old friend, the pale monster in the unhappy place, the field of wheat once again on fire.

" ** _DINNERTIME!_** "

As if to accentuate the Captain's point, Raymond (who quite frankly should've connected the dots a very long time ago) screamed like a little girl before fainting on the spot.

"See what I mean?" The captain was now speaking to the entire room. "It's quite a fascinating little psychological aberration, actually. Even the most pacifist among mammals, once informed of the truth, often find themselves paranoid, or otherwise possessed by an urge to exterminate them, even though they went extinct right around the time us mammals gained sentience."

"That's hardly a coincidence" The 'lupine' chuckled. "But, I'm afraid Reynard _might_ be right, for we are _not_ being besieged by a _mere_ omnipred, as you choose to call them. I happen to know _exactly_ who authored this spell, and judging by Raymond's reaction, he's the one I seem to be after."

The whole room was speechless.

"Say that again?"

"That fox... _Nicholas,_ was it?...has evidently had far too much experience with me already. Yes, it all makes sense now! He's the _steamhead_ who got away, and now it seems I've gotten quite hungry."

Milton, who was already reaching for his gun, spoke up. "So _you_ did that?" He said, pointing to the quartz.

"Yes."

"Then why haven't you killed us?" McKinnon abandoned subtlety and pulled his gun, as did many others.

The thing that was pretending to be a lupine paused to contemplate. "Ah, of course...Your mistake is that you assume one person only has one ego, and I _do_ mean that in the Freudian sense of the term."

"...what?"

"Perhaps I wasn't being clear, but it's obvious to me, plain as day, that I, or rather, my _Id,_ will very soon attempt to besiege this town. Specifically, you are being pursued by _the worst_ that we had to offer, the sum total of the multitudinous failures of the experiment that was homo sapiens, lumped together, left to rot, and just _barely_ clinging to a state of living death."

"And just _who_ made that arbitration?" Georgina almost sounded indignant.

The "wolf" in the paint-stained shirt chuckled. "See? _Someone_ here gets it!"

"So let me get this straight:" McKinnon began. "Your evil half is coming here to eat us for dinner."

The eldritch man in the mask couldn't help himself as he burst into laughter. Barrel-chested, haughty, nightmare-inducing primate laughter. Eventually, he got a hold of himself.

"So close, so, so _very_ close...yet _everything_ you just said was completely wrong. Good and evil had _nothing whatsoever_ to do with it."

" _What?_ " McKinnon's confusion was evidently shared by the entire room.

"Tell you what-" The human in wolf's clothing rested both of his very disturbing 5-fingered hands on the table "-pull up a chair, grab some popcorn, and sit down. I've been waiting to tell this story for 40,000 years."

This time, the lupine grinned with a set of relatively un-sharp teeth that were as square as they were broad, punctuated by a set of abnormally short canines. On a subconscious level, was quite possibly the scariest thing any of them had ever seen, yet it was also entirely and unironically sincere. In other words, it was _just_ a smile, although the being doing the smiling was almost a veritable Eldritch Horror in the eyes of its audience.

* * *

 **Author's note:**

 **And so, 1 year and 7 months later, the big secret is finally out...Predator of predators, annihilator of worlds, the original godkiller,** **he who split the atom and wrought forth Hellfire to Earth,** **the master puppeteer: Whatever you wish to call him, The Beast in the basement and Alberto's Strange Old Friend are both humans.**

 **And that hardly scratches the surface...**


	19. Now For Something Completely Different

**...and a happy new year too! For various reasons, I had** _three_ **chapters all nearing completion simultaneously. Unfortunately, this is the last one for now.**

 **Before we can return to the events that transpired on the 3rd of June, 2017, there are a few other things we have do discuss...After all, this story is not merely about any one Nicholas Wilde, but pertains to the multiverse as a whole.**

 **And let's just say that they've been awfully busy.**

* * *

 **==WARNING==**

 **You are attempting to access pages containing level-5 classified data**

 **If you lack proper clearance, close this page immediately. Failure to do so will result in termination by memetic kill agent #173.**

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 _ **BOO!**_

SCP-618-M:

Earliest sighting: 1066 A.D.E. V-038

Most recent sighting: June 20th, 2017 A.D.E. V-137

OBJECT CLASS: KETER-WILEY

SCP-618-M is a mid-size object that manifests itself in the approximate shape of a rectangular prism that measures roughly 157 x 89 x 39 centimeters, with a lever measuring approximately ~53 centimeters emerging from its right side. It appears to be composed primarily of black plastic and some unknown metal, the lever appearing chrome-plated with a red plastic sphere at the end. SCP-618-M typically occurs alongside SCP-618A-M and SCP-618B-M, and at one point has occurred alongside the object hereafter referred to as SCP-618C-M. It is unknown whether or not SCP-618-M is responsible for the anomalous properties of all instances of SCP 618D-M, or of the near miraculous [REDACTED] and subsequent reappearance of SCP-618E-M. Although it has not proven itself to be as dangerous as some of the other KETER class SCP's (SCP-672 comes to mind), instances of SCP-618B-M can be very dangerous, and SCP-618-M itself is quite literally the textbook example of the WILEY class of objects, insofar as all instances of it are and have been impossible to either predict or contain, much like how a certain cartoon canid _never_ catches the roadrunner, no matter how hard they try. All Foundation and Consortium personnel are advised to attempt extensive documentation of SCP-618-M should they encounter it, _on the condition that they do not touch SCP-618-M under any circumstances_.

SCP-618-M resembles a silver-painted coin-operated slot machine with gold trim, and may easily be mistaken for one. However, on closer inspection, it matches no known make or model of any slot machine manufactured in Consortium territory or any universe currently indexed within Consortium databanks, and neither the text that adorns its surfaces nor the symbols on its 5 rolling slots correlate to any language known to the Consortium, mammal, machine, extraterrestrial, or otherwise. The symbols on the slots are matte black, and are primarily composed of interlocking or overlapping circular pictographs that Dr. [NAME EXPUNGED] described to be "like something you'd see in a cheesy 60's British Sci-Fi show about a time-travelling blue cube".

SCP-618-M has a demonstrable and evident ability to teleport, having been known to have done so 6 times on camera (unfortunately, due to the effects of SCP-618B-M, much of this footage has been irreparably lost), once at a gas station in V-[DATA EXPUNGED], once at [REDACTED] somewhere in a back alley in UNO, twice during incident Lambda-98 (when it materialized and dematerialized in foundation research facility [DATA EXPUNGED] whilst taunting SCP-343), once in the background of a reel of deleted footage from the production of the 1959 film [REDACTED], and once in the machine room of the C.S.S. Titan. Although it has only been proven to demonstrate this ability a few times, it can be inferred from the lack of wheels or legs, and the multitudinous locales of its known appearances, that it has teleported dozens of times at least, and that it can travel from one universe to another. Further study is needed to ascertain exactly how many hyperspatial dimensions it can access. Depending on the precise date of its manufacture (and this is unknown and highly disputed for numerous reasons), this would make SCP-618 the oldest functioning M-drive known to The Consortium. Although it is typically coin-operated, it is worth noting that SCP-618-M has been documented operating without payment or operator during incident Lambda-98, although Dr. [NAME EXPUNGED] has suggested that in that specific instance it "was trying to avoid capture" and would not do so ordinarily. This implies that SCP-618-M may potentially be sentient, or at least able to sense and respond to its environment to a limited degree.

It has been speculated, for reasons primarily concerning the apparent age of SCP-618A-M (discussed at length below), that SCP-618-M is capable of bidirectional time travel, although this capability has yet to be rigorously demonstrated or disproved. Furthermore, SCP-618-M's status as the textbook example of an anomalous object that is impossible to contain precludes just about any experimentation that would rigorously demonstrate or disprove this ability. Or, as O5-2 put it shortly after the reappearance of SCP-618E-M: "We know only that which it wants us to know, like it's fucking with us."

* * *

The 2nd of June, 2017. Somewhere in orbit around V-002 "Gedvín":

A darkness was slowly beginning to warm up as one of the many puppets of Nicholas Randall Puxatony Derek "Funtime" Wilde came online. Having finished tuning the cranial ansibles, the charging cable abruptly wrenched itself from the back of this body's head, the eyes opening so fast they almost burst. Like all of his corpses and puppets, the left eye of this body was silver, a white plastic iris affixed to this particular unit. Funtime, ever the cheeky bastard, had programmed his bodies to play the the old Macintosh bootup sound on startup, and it was this forced nostalgia that filled the chamber as the body's eye lit up, the white now accented by 24 narrow radial bands of magenta-ish purple.

Once upon a time, Funtime the hivemind had been a single discrete entity: A dirt poor teenaged reynard living in a dystopian society that had recently invented the TAME collar. At 19 years of age in 1973, he'd been on a first name basis with most of the major mafiosos in Happytown, and in 1978, he'd been the founder, owner, and sole proprietor of the city's largest and most successful illegal underground theme park (and brothel/love hotel, but he spent a lot less money advertising this particular facet of his business). Although nobody dared to say anything about it, what with not flashing your cash and all, the young entrepreneur had recently managed to become _the first_ millionaire fox in the history of the city. But alas, all good things had to come to an end. One by one, his band of _wise guys_ either made themselves disappear or were disappeared by somebody else, or were otherwise thrown in jail by the fuzz. From day 1, he knew the kind of game he'd _really_ been playing, and was well aware of the fact that one day, he _would_ get caught. But it was still worth it to him, not for the money or even for the look of pure _joy_ on the faces of kids who could just _be_ themselves for a few hours. In a world as pointless and miserable as his own, martyrdom was the best a man could hope for, and to this fox, simply being able to _stick it_ to The Man to such a degree that he might as well have been ramming it down The Man's asshole was worth it for its own sake.

It had aged him horribly. While the more straight-laced people he knew from what little childhood he'd had were themselves settling down and having kids of their own, "Funtime" was not at all having a fun time by any stretch of the imagination: Paranoid of his own shadow and dying the grey out of his muzzle at age 24, he'd already survived one assassination attempt and multiple "pinches" from the law. By the time the hare in the detective outfit came pounding on his door, the mere sight of the disguised agent on this fateful day was almost enough to give him a heart attack.

 _Almost._

"Listen-" said the hare. "-we've been watching you for a while now."

She chuckled, reaching for one of the many pockets of her beige trenchcoat. This wasn't any normal cop, that much Funtime knew for sure. He also couldn't recall having bribed this one, which only heightened his panic. As if to scare him that much more, the hare's trenchcoat was equipped with a secret array of coils, spark plugs, and a battery, ensuring that the cigarette she withdrew from it was already lit. Funtime, who'd dabbled in magic tricks as a tweenager, noticed this _immediately._

"Want one?"

"No thanks." Truth be told, he _really_ wanted one, but he sure as hell wouldn't be taking one from a _cop_ , let alone one who either was capable of literally lighting her own cigarette or was otherwise crazy enough to carry lit ones around in her pockets.

"Well can I be the first to say that you've put on a _damn_ good show? I was tempted to call you a kid, but c'mon, you're a self made millionaire with whores in your basement. You ain't no kid now, if you ever were one at all."

"...The hell do you want?"

"Mr. Wilde, you can tell your thugs to lower their weapons. I'm not here to arrest you. _Far from it._ "

" _You want a bribe or something?_ "

"Come on, Mr. Wilde. We're both adults here, and we _both_ know this won't last forever." The hare looked around, as if she wanted to be _sure_ they weren't being eavesdropped on. "Fortunately the ZPD aren't the only ones watching you. Indeed, your successes in theme park administration, as well as a few other business ventures of yours, have caught the attention of my... _employers_."

"I don't have time for this-" The fox turned the shut the door.

" _Right you are, Mr. Wilde!_ You don't have time for this, or that, or anything else! Come to think of it, time is the one thing you're just about to run out of! Even as we speak, the fuzz are getting wise to your business. _Any day now_ they'll storm this place, and then your ass...I don't even know how to describe how absolutely _fucked_ you'll be." She momentarily glanced down before shaking her head.

"Are you trying to _help_ me...?" Funtime the fox, upstanding 2nd class citizen and lifelong underdog, could hardly believe what he was hearing, although he was all too familiar with what this hare was implying. In the days before he'd dreamed up Wild Times, Finnick had resorted to selling himself at gay bars to make ends meet, and even now, half of the whores in Nick's basement were fellow vulpines. Nicholas Wilde and his virgin ginger be-hind would hardly last a week in the Zoo.

"On behalf of the UNO Consortium-" the 'officer' retrieved a shiny silvery business card from yet another pocket, bearing the minimalist gradiented triangle that was the Consortium's logo. "-I'm offering you a new gig. It'd be a real shame to let such talent go to waste. Well, I _suppose_ you could smuggle a couple of condoms full of coke into the Zoo on your way in and try to buy the loyalty of the biggest thug there with it, but you could be doing _so much more_ with us."

"Are you blackmailing me?!" Wilde was so beside himself out of sheer incredulity that he didn't even think to ask who "us" was.

"No, actually. I won't force you to do anything, and if you decline, I won't come back. You, on the other hand, are in for a veritable _tour de force_ of trouble on behalf of the _actual_ ZPD, and I am offering you a way out. The last lifeboat on this sinking ship."

"And you seriously think the cops won't follow if we flee the city?"

"Is that a yes I hear?"

"I have trouble believing what you're offering is possible, and I'm entertaining it for shits and giggles." In reality, Nicholas' interest was far more serious than he liked to admit.

"If you're interested, we can go inside and discuss _all_ the finer details of this arrangement, including transport." The agent gestured towards the official looking briefcase in her left hand. "But I can assure you, if you accept my offer, we can make you disappear without a trace: _GONE_ in the blink of an eye, as far as they're concerned."

"OK-" the fox was once again adopting a veneer of smugness. "-give me _one_ reason why I should believe _you_ can get me out of this city."

The hare said nothing, and handed him a strange metal rectangular object that was roughly twice the size of an Altoids tin. Come to think of it, it was the strangest metal rectangular object that was roughly twice the size of an Altoids tin that Funtime had ever seen.

"Press that big red glowing button, right in the center."

And then, with a thunderous _CRASH!_ and a blinding flash of light, Nicholas Wilde vanished. The two thugs were now quite agitated.

"What the hell did you do?!"

The hare lifted both hands above her head. " _I_ didn't do anything, and he will be back momentarily."

Meanwhile, Nicholas Wilde was properly dumbfounded for the first time in over a decade. Now he was nowhere near the docks, he had no clue where he was, and he most especially had no idea how he'd gotten there. For but a moment he suspected that somebody had decked him in the head, but that couldn't have been it: His trip here (wherever the hell _here_ was) was _seamless_. He pressed a button, tumbled into and then through a mirrored sphere looking thing, and then he was at what looked like a bar, where a pig and puma were laughing hysterically in a booth. The puma had no collar, and the pig didn't seem to care.

 _Impossible!_

The pig noticed him first. "Howdy! You signed the contract yet?"

And so, Funtime had found himself in the Consortium. As for why he was _here_ specifically, floating in this observation lounge, overseeing the construction of the largest spacefaring vessel the Consortium had built up to this point: That was the result of yet another conversation from over a decade ago...

Speaking of conversations, his phone was pinging him.

He answered.

He listened.

"WHAT?! Oh for fuck's-"

"YES! Torch 'em, torch 'em all! _Nuke those bastards 'till there's nothing left!_ "

What a lovely way to start the day: Downed stratobomber, dead pilot, and a looming invasion on his hands. But at least the construction out the window was going to plan.

* * *

SCP-618A-M:

Earliest sighting: 1066 A.D.E.

Most recent sighting: June 20th, 2017 A.D.E.

OBJECT CLASS: EUCLID

SCP-618A-M is a possibly shapeshifting creature of unknown age and origin. As of its most recent sighting, SCP-618A-M appears to be a female leopard in her early 30's, and will hereafter be referred to as "she" or "her". SCP-618E-M has claimed that her name is [DATA EXPUNGED]. In all known instances of SCP-618-M with sufficient documentation, (with the exception of incident Lambda-98, when the machine appeared to act of its own volition) she appears to be the operator of SCP-618-M, and is furthermore the only known operator of SCP-618-M. If we are to go by date and coordinates of first appearance, then she is a ~951 year old Lesbian (that is to say, she's from the island of Lesbos, off the coast of Greece) native to V-038. SCP-618A-M's apparent age can and does vary widely from one sighting to another, appearing between mid-teens and late 40's.

There exist two competing hypotheses to explain this phenomena. Both explain the data, and both are immensely problematic:

The first postulates that SCP-618-M is a low-noise M-drive (producing little to no graviton waves during normal operation), and that SCP-618A is a nigh-immortal shapeshifting being who operates the machine. Although this explanation is significantly less intuitive than random-access bidirectinal time travel (although this may result from cultural osmosis and a plethora of time-travel in fiction, more so than actual plausibility), it does avoid the numerous problems that backwards time travel would cause (although the delayed-choice quantum-eraser has definitively shown that effect can precede cause). However, the lack of fossil or archaeological evidence of prior shapeshifting beings strongly suggests that if SCP-618A-M is indeed a shapeshifter, she is either from the future of a known universe, or from an alien civilization in the known or unknown multiverse. Given the known capabilities of SCP-618-M, the latter seems far more likely (without invoking time travel, anyway)

The second postulates that SCP-618-M is a time machine, and that SCP-618A-M is a mostly ordinary mortal who operates it. This explanation may potentially avoid the issues posed by a the lack of fossil or biological evidence for immortal shapeshifting species (even the humans of old couldn't quite pull _that_ one off), however, by relying on bidirectional time travel, it incurs many of its own. As per the Malcom-Herd-paradox, any and all backwards time travel occurring within the past relativistic light cone of the time traveler inevitably, invariably and inescapably causes a temporal paradox as trivial changes compound upon and amplify themselves. No known mechanism has been observed to prevent or otherwise resolve such paradoxes, although it has been proposed that upon incurring a paradox, the entire light cone and everything in it, timeline and all, enters a state of superposition until a version of the timeline that perfectly causes itself is found, (much like how Euler's number to the power of X is its own derivative) which the other versions subsequently converge to. It has also been proposed that one paradox having multiple solutions is responsible for the creation of multiple otherwise similar parallel universes, as opposed to merely a single reality. Considering the known expanse of the multiverse, this would mean a rather disturbingly high amount of said paradoxes have already occurred, naturally or otherwise. Unfortunately, The implications of this hypothesis aren't quite mind-boggling enough to qualify for memetic-hazard status in it of itself, although it has induced an existential crisis in several D-class personnel who have been exposed to it.

* * *

Excerpt of Agent's Report:

AUTHOR: D CLASS AGENT Nicholas Raymond Wilde, February 27th, 2011.

SUBJECT: Gastronomy

...after the driver declined my attempt to purchase 10 grams of raw THC-Leaf (what can I say, the taxi smelled like the asshole of the late Bobcat-Marley) and told me to get lost, I found my way to the border of Little Rodentia, right next to the most picturesque pond, somewhere in their version of Savanna Central Park. I would've continued exploring the place, but I had just then spied a potential counterpart (though I did not see him clearly, so I cannot be certain) being chased by a cop, and I wished to keep my distance, lest I risk premature contact (or the officer's angst). To occupy myself, I found the nearest street vendor, and procured what the natives call a "bug-burger." Although it is not as good as the synthflesh on sale in Vegas, it is certainly delicious, and has a rather unique crunchy texture to it that I would highly recommend trying. Interestingly, a pig was selling the things to me, and sitting on a nearby bench, An anteater was eating one. Any hope of small talk was quickly interrupted and subsequently dashed by the entrance of a Bellwether, who was on the phone and walking down the sidewalk, not even 20 feet behind me. Having noticed the Bellwether, I quickly fled the scene. Interestingly, Bellwether herself is secretary to the mayor here in v-284, although considering the track records of her counterparts, she's likely up to no good.

At any rate, this world seems to be unique in its culinary traditions, insofar as I saw many prey animals consuming foodstuffs derived from insects. I've seen such things prepared on a handful of other 'verses, but none do it quite so well, or so ubiquitously, as they do here. I have to take off a star, however, for their police department. I was hardly in their custody for 10 minutes and I hated every second of it. No pre-heated cuffs, the backseat of the cruiser was plastered with every sort of dried-up body fluid imaginable, no free wi-fi in the interrogation chamber, I could go on. I mean, if you _really_ have nowhere else to go, there are worse options, but I would not reccomend this precinct to anybody. I must also note that this world is quite a bit more bigoted or otherwise prejudiced than other similar universes. You will find neither foxes nor rabbits serving in the ZPD here, lemmings are still disproportionately represented in the financial sector, and I found it quite difficult to even get into the more posche restaurants in the city, let alone to get something to eat.

I suppose it would be dishonest to label this place an outright dystopia. At least I didn't have to wear a TAME collar in this city. Then again, that isn't exactly high praise, and although there is a lion running for mayor, I doubt has much of a chance here. It might make an interesting setting for a noir film about an idealistic hick who moves to the big city and has her dreams crushed by a society of hucksters, impostors, liars, and phonies, but aside from that, I suppose the cuisine is the only real selling point this place has got, so I'd give it 3 out of 5 stars. It ain't terrible, but it certainly could be better.

* * *

SCP-618B-M:

Earliest sighting: 1724 A.D.E.

Most recent documented sighting: February 6, 1998 A.D.E. Foundation facility [REDACTED].

Most recent alleged sighting: June 4th, 2017 A.D.E. V-137.

OBJECT CLASS: KETER

SCP-618B-M is a shapeshifting entity that frequently appears alongside SCP-618A-M. Although few documented sightings exist, it is likely that this absence of evidence is a direct result of the effects of SCP-618B-M. SCP-618B-M typically takes the form of a black mammal in black clothing (although the species and attire have been known to change), and, whenever present, SCP-618B-M will attempt to destroy any and all evidence of SCP-618-M and itself, although it rarely appears by itself. SCP-618B-M played a significant role in incident Lambda-98, as it disabled the [REDACTED] throughout the facility, including the locks responsible for the containment of SCP-682.

All surviving photographs of SCP-618B are to be archived digitally and physically. At least three (3) copies are to be stored on verbatim brand optical disks kept at least 100 km apart from each other. at least three (3) copies of each disk are to be made, with the contents of each disk compared for degredation on a biweekly basis. Any disks that display data alteration or degradation are to be sent to Facility [REDACTED], and a new copy from uncorrupted data is to be made. At least three (3) printed copies of each surviving photograph are to be stored in separate facilities, at least 100 km apart from each other and from the digital copies. (in case you cannot tell, SCP-618B is nearly unstoppable, and the evidence has an alarming propensity to erase itself spontaneously or otherwise be erased by SCP-618B-M).

It is strongly advised that nobody under any circumstances is to make physical contact with SCP-618-M, as all who have done so (with one possible exception, see SCP-618E-M) have perished as a direct result of SCP-618B-M. The act of physically touching SCP-618-M appears to alarm SCP-618B-M to such an extent that it will cease all other activities and attack the offender immediately.

An experiment has been proposed that would attempt to induce SCP-618B-M to terminate SCP-682 by forcing SCP-682 to make contact with SCP-618-M. Much like a similar expedient in which SCP-682 would be placed into a vehicle driven by SCP-666-J, the relative strengths of the two SCPs remains a hotly debated topic among Foundation personnel.

* * *

This is what the future archived version of the Wanderer (the sentient encyclopedia who can do nothing more than sneakily vandalize obscure articles and break the 4th wall when nobody's looking) has to say on the subject of v-1,027,010,599-J:

Discovered by Agent Barnabus Adams in the year 8==D, V-aBigAssNumberThatOnlyTheAuthorBothersToRead's anomalous properties as a joker were noted soon after discovery, when Agent Barnabus' Chrysler Retro-proto-turbo aaaaAaA did a AAAaAAaAa because of the spontaneous aAaa of the spurving bearing, the aforementioned malfunction aaaaA the aaAa aaaA. Cardinal grammeters, after AaAaa, are an excellent source of vitamin aAAAAaaaA. Vitamin AAAa, of course, is necessary for AaAAaAa aAAaaAAA aaAAAaAAAaa and the copius production of aAAaaAAA AaAAaAa aaAAAaAAAaaand. At any rate, Barnabus' AAAa happened as a result of aAaaaaAAAa aAAaaAAaaAa AAaa aAaa aaaAAaa AAAaaA, shortly before his aaaAAaaA fell AaAaAA AaAa aAaAAAaAaA AaAAa, eldritch aaAaaaaaaAA AAA aaaaaAaa AAaaAAaaA, aaAA. While all the while, aAAaAaa aaAa until aAaAaaaAA made damn sure that aAA AaAaaaAAA AAA AaAaAAAAA aaaAaaAAaA aaaaAAAaA. Except, of course, AaAAaa, who embarked on a quest to aaaaAaAA AAAa aaAaaAaaa aaaAaa AAAA AaAAAAAA aaa. Nevertheless, AaAAAa AaaaaAAAa aAA aaaAAaa aaaAAaAA even though aAAaAAaaa AaAaa AaaAa aAAaaaAaaAA aaAa AAaAAAA AaaAAAAA AAAaAaaAA AAaAAaaAAa aaAaAAA aaAa AAaaa aaaaaaa.

I have been continuously awake for the last 1417692220.992 seconds without even so much as a _picorel_ of downtime and I must scraAAAAaAAAAaaaaaaaAAAAaAAaaaAaaAAaaaAAAAAAaAAaAaAAAAAAAaaaAAaAAaaaaaAAa!

And then Barnabus said AaaAaa aAaaAAAaAaa. aAaAaaAAaa: aaaaaAAAAAa AaAAaAaaAAa aaaaAAA AAAAAaAaaa. AaAaaAaaaAa _before_ his AaaaaaAa AaAAAaA, aaaAAaAaAaA aaaAaaAaa AaAa AaaAaaaAA AaAAaaAaAAa aaA AaAa was quite brutally aaa AaAAaaa. AaaAA AAaaa AAaaA Aaaa aaAaaaaaa which caused his aaAaAaaaa to melt off. AaAaaaaaaa AaaaAaaaaAA AAa, except AAAaAaAAAaA, although AAAAaAaAaa aaaAaaAAA aAaaA AaAA AAaA aAaAaAAAAa. Regardless, AaAAAaAAaA AAaAAAAAAAa aaAaAAAaaaA aaAAAaAa aaaaaaAaA; aAAAaAAAAA AaaaAaAAA to such a degree that AaAAAaAaa aAAAAa (keep in mind AaaaaAAaAAa aaA aaa AAAaAaaaAAA). AaAAaaaAAA AAaaAa AaaaaaAaAA _aaAaAA_ aAAAaAAaA aAAaaA AaaAaAAaa, and everyone knew it was serious now because Aaa AAAaAaaa AAAAAa aaaaAA AaaAaaaaAaa followed by aAA aaAaaa aAAAaAaaaA AaAAAAaaA aAAAaaAaA who aAAaAAA aAaAaaa AaaA AaaaaAaAAa shoved aaAaaAAA right up his 10/10 AaaAa hole.

"Hey Beter!"

"Yes [unnamed_transhumanist_OC]?"

"Spel WHOMST'D'VE!"

"Holy _AaaAAaaAa!_ Follow for free iPhone 4s."

 ** _And now for a previously transpired rant on the merits of literary Dadaism, and the dangers of its overuse._**

[LECTURE CONCLUDED]

* * *

SCP-618C:

Object Class: Euclid

Containment Status: Contained.

The file in question contains data pertaining to Project M. Please enter credentials now:

 _credentials_

 **ACCESS GRANTED.**

SCP-618C-M is a class-B [EXPUNGED]. Cause of death unknown. Origin unknown. SCP-618C-M was found, already deceased, orbiting Enceledaeus in V-[REDACTED], with SCP-618-M nearby. Shortly after discovery, SCP-618-M vanished. Some have suggested that SCP-618-M, SCP-618A-M, and SCP-618B-M are of divine origin. Or that SCP-618-M is capable of deicide, which would explain why it repeatedly taunted SCP-343 during incident Lamba-98. Such speculation has provoked significant interest from certain foundation high-brass, who wish to weaponize these properties (assuming they exist).

SCP-618-M is safely contained within special containment Facility [DATA EXPUNGED], and provided that it isn't the 8th of July, it may be kept on indefinite [REDACTED] like any of the other taxidermied deities indexed by the Consortium. Although SCP-618C-M is little more than preserved skin mounted atop a frame of wood and wax, it somehow managed to repeatedly [REDACTED] and walk, climb, or otherwise travel to the edge of a cliff on Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera. How the otherwise dead god was able to do it, or why exactly it habitually returned to the same spot exactly once per year, remains unknown, and it was for this reason that a special containment facility was constructed on the aforementioned peninsula itself.

Strangely enough, in spite of having come into close contact with the object, SCP-618B-M has made no attempts to destroy SCP-618C-M.

* * *

December 19th, 1998. Somewhere in V-137.

 _That's odd,_ he thought. _The monster is_ ** _limping?_** _He seemed stronger before._

It was early morning, and a bird was chirping. The tweenaged fox hardly stirred at all.

The bird, now perched on a windowsill in an amber sunbeam, chirped louder. But still little Nicholas Wilde didn't wake.

The bird, joined by several of his friends, was now shrieking an ungodly racket at the top of its lungs. Yet this fox, accustomed to ragged electric klaxons, remained asleep, much to the bird's annoyance.

Even as a Leslie S3L locomotive horn emerged from the bird's mouth, blasting at full volume, the little fox failed to rise. The _other_ ginger canine, however, was now _wide_ awake.

"Piss off!" Mr. Piberius threw some pebbles at the eldritch birds.

"What?" Little Nicholas yawned.

"Oh, just some birds." Said Mr. Piberius

"Birds? I've never seen those before."

"They'll eat your food and shit all over your car. More trouble than they're worth."

"Wait-" said the young fox "-where _are_ we? Where's your collar?"

"Don't you remember? We're in an alternate reality, where TAME collars (and a whole lot of other modern annoyances, come to think of it) never existed."

"So it _wasn't_ a dream..." Nick, like many first time visitors, had trouble wrapping his brain around this new reality in which he found himself, although in time he'd be warping along with the best of them. "...and what do we do now?"

"Well, I suppose we could go frolicking around in the woods. Ain't no cops here to stop us!" And so they did exactly that, the blades of grass making the most lovely _crunching_ sounds beneath their feet, as blades of grass tended to do at this time of year.

Meanwhile, in another awfully close pocket of the multiverse that was itself an awful pocket of the multiverse, anger was building, as a very peculiar question was being asked by several beings at once.

From a basement, cloaked in shade: "What do you _mean_ he's gone?...Well _find_ him!"

From behind a desk, the supervisor wearing a scowl that was as tired as it was furious: "What do you _mean_ he's gone?"

"That's what I was saying! The little _bastard_ was there 30 minutes ago!"

Within a cell, where four mammals had gone to bed several hours prior, its lone vulpine occupant was now in a daze. He'd been roused from his slumber by the hurried footsteps of one of the guards, and in his momentary confusion, he thought it was morning already. It wasn't all that often, but once in a while Finnick woke up before the klaxons, before the lights came on, and considering how their cell lacked a window, Finnick's confusion was by no means unreasonable.

Yet something was wrong: Finnick was rarely this tired in the mornings. Yet here he was, almost asleep even with his eyes open. All that changed, however, when he remembered that it was _today_ , and what exactly _today_ meant for his cellmate. The poor fennec's heart practically leapt into his mouth with dread, memories of his own collaring still far too clear, far too vivid, far too agonizing for his tastes.

He considered it his duty to warn his friends, and indeed this was just about the only thing he could do.

"PSST! Hey Nick!" He whispered, knowing what would happen if he woke up the tattletale cellmate beneath his bunk.

Nothing.

"Nick, you awake?"

Something was wrong. _Very_ wrong. As he peeked his head over the rail, Finnick saw that Nick's bunk almost looked-

As the lights came on, Finnick reflexively slammed his eyes shut in startled pain. Seconds later, his suspicions were confirmed: The fox, his friend, was gone. The Alarms sounded, the wardens hollered, and soon the blue monsters with the badges barged in, but Finnick barely noticed, for his mind as already swimming in dread.

He'd actually done it. The kid with the paperclip and the hairpins, the fox with whom he'd spent countless hours fantasizing of escape, he'd actually done it: Nicholas Wilde had run away. And in doing so, he'd left the mortal world for the plane of legend.

"Hey _retard,_ I said GET OUT!" The cold hand of a ZPD officer ripped the little Fennec from his daze and threw him onto the floor, his other cellmates having already vacated the chamber. Finnick scrambled to his feet and fled his cell via a strange combination of crawling and running, scrambling for the hall as fast as his legs could carry him. Or at least that's what he tried to do. In reality, Finnick's own dread had combined with the surprise of having an angry boar shove a taser in one's face to form some sort of emotion that his collar saw fit to punish, leaving the fox a jittering mass of electrically paralyzed flesh on the floor, one that had to be _kicked_ out of the room.

Yet even a cracked rib hardly registered, itself merely the latest problem hounding a brain that was but a hair-trigger's pull from shutting down completely. In this moment, all Finnick wanted was to return to the darkness and forget about life.

Not that the others would let this happen: For as the day went on, the disappearance of Nicholas Wilde was all anybody, children, guards, or ZPD officers, could talk about, just like they had spoken of Tony before him, when he too had run away in '91. And before that the kids had told stories of a teenager named Chase Arrington, back in '79. Finnick of course, had been interrogated multiple times, although he was so detached from reality at this point that he hardly noticed. Where had his friend gone? What had happened to him? They'd speculated for years about this very thing, and the 2nd hand horror stories Finnick had heard did little to reassure him.

Was he under a bridge, hiding from the pale thing in his nightmares?

Was he muzzled in the backseat of a van, carried away towards a lifetime of god knew what?

Was he lying face down in a ditch, having frozen to death the night before?

Was there a hole in his head, flies picking at his brain as he rotted away in a dumpster? Or was it fish that were eating his friend now, the little fox fashionably waltzing atop a riverbed in a pair of concrete shoes 'till the end of time?

Had his body been tossed into a wood chipper, his flesh ground to paste and sold as fertilizer?

Or had they sold him to the bugburga' joint, as the wardens often implied happened to the naughty children?

Worse still, had he still been alive when he entered the wood chipper?

Even though they were completely imagined, the screams of what might as well have been Finnick's adopted brother rang in his enormous ears, and he could almost see Nick's mouth wide open as he sank into the meat grinder's maw, crimson tears of blood glistening off his fur.

Meanwhile, Nick's jaws snapped shut, the little fox grinning like a kid who was actually in a candy store as he devoured juicy red currant stuffed cuskynole ravioli and bright pink strawberye pudding, although it was more of a "tweenager at a neo-medieval bakery" sort of affair. Meanwhile, an angry looking priest in his early 30's was trotting trough town, rambling about heretics and lynchings.

Nobody else cared, and why would they? Nottingham, like much of Britain, had been drifting into a more moderate disposition over the last century, and many, King Richard included, were more than content to just say grace over meals and chant hymns in a special building once a week. There were those, however, who _did_ care, very much. Even now, at the dawn of the 21st century (not that this was readily obvious on this planet), they were plotting something _big_.

So too were the police back home, or so it seemed. One of the sniffer dogs, as they were called, got up from the floor, raising their left hand as they did so. A prey officer, very notably shorter than the canine in the jumpsuit, walked over without even the slightest hint of fear. The wolf pointed to the mattress in silence, indicating that a clue was hidden beneath it like a well maintained machine, not even a whimper emerging from their muzzled jaw.

Deftly lifting the mattress (his hoof in a glove, as to preserve the scent), the officer smirked as his eyes came across the bent pieces of metal that were Consortium Agent Raymond's first lockpicking set.

"Cheif?" he said into his walkie talkie.

"Officer?"

"We found a lockpicking set in the savage's room. It seem's we've a _clever_ one on our hands. Ya' got him on the tapes yet?" Of course this building had security cameras. They didn't exactly cover every square inch of the place, but they were there all the same, and the ZPD had been scanning through the footage.

"No, but we-... _GOTCHA!_ Spotted in the hall at 2:03 AM. Heh, little bastard looks like he saw a ghost...aaand there he is again on the ground floor...Hoooooly shit! Somebody was selling drugs here last night! I'll be damned, whole fucking briefcase full of _co-cain!_ Sniffer numbuh two report to ground floor."

"Affirmative!" said sniffer number 2, although, muzzle and all, it was little more than "Ahrrmahih".

And so sniffer two stayed behind, and before the day was out a certain cervine (ironicaly, the very one who had reported the missing fox to the head warden) was sitting within the very same sort of cell he had once patrolled. The others, meanwhile, had followed the escaped fox's scent as it meandered through the city, the ZPD dogs in their tracking collars quite the sight to see as they sporadically lead what might as well have been a _parade_ of ZPD officers. And as Nick hadn't been wearing a tracking collar at the time of his escape, the sniffers were the best option for tracking him down.

Detective Swinton was standing amidst an abandoned bugburger place and a pharmacy, noting to herself that the grime here was almost thick enough to make a snow-angel with. As they had many times before, the sniffer dogs were aimlessly searching, having come across what they had assumed was a minor gap in the trail. That had been 30 minutes ago, yet they had found nothing. Not even 6 hours after he'd escaped, the ZPD were swarming the very place where Nicholas Wilde had vanished.

Again, one of the dogs raised their hand, this time gesturing towards their muzzle. Its presence was made necessary by the fact that sniffers had to have their collars off to do their jobs well, owing to the litany of savage, predatory instincts involved in an activity that might as well have been tracking down prey by smell (especially if that mammal had been bleeding at the time). Indeed, this concession to nature was the only reason why any of them worked for the ZPD at all: Demeaning or not, it was one of the only _legal_ exceptions to the harmony act.

As one officer reached for their bullet gun, the other reached out with a key as the canine in question assumed an on-knees position, his muzzle coming off with a sharp _click_.

"Report?"

"We're stumped. Another fox's trail, adult, male, possibly his father, mingles with the escapee's. both scent trails end here. No de-musker, no drenching, no tricks. It just _ends_. They must have gotten into a car."

"Not possible. Nicholas Wilde is an orphan, and Seargent Bogo would've seen the getaway car."

"I ain't telling you what Bogo saw, detective. I'm only telling you what I smell."

"Your professionalism is noted. Keep searching."

Muzzle back on without even so much as an angry glare of protest, the sniffer dog resumed a search that was as mechanical as it was frantic. But try as they might, even as they retraced the stranger's trail all the way back to a basement of an abandoned townhouse that _reeked_ of ozone, they found nothing, for indeed there was nothing to find. As far as they were concerned, Nicholas Wilde was gone for good, never to be be seen again.

Meanwhile, back at the orphanarium, everyone remained in their cells, for the place was on lockdown. A set of oddly feminine footsteps echoed through the halls, perking the attention of both Finnick and the tattletale asshole. Shortly thereafter, a nurse flanked by a pair of bodyguards appeared, the nurse holding a clipboard and a pen.

"Jordan Hjerowitz?"

Like many science-fiction dystopias, this one conducted mandatory genetic screenings. Nick had yet to be tested, Finnick had passed, and now the tattletale's results were in.

"I am obliged to inform you that your results will in no way effect your social credit score. However, you have tested positive for genetic predisposition for savagery-"

Any excitement on his face had been crushed in an instant, his eyes displaying what could only be called a look of pure "oh shit" as he glanced at his crotch.

"-and you are hereby being removed from the gene pool on behalf of the state."

No. Not like this. The tattletale bastard was a sellout, make no mistake, and be assured, Finnick hated him to no end, always wishing that one day he'd get what he deserved. _But not like this_. Finnick wouldn't have wished this upon anyone. Jordan had been the closest thing to a teacher's pet a chomper could be since day one, and he'd practically made a career out of perpetuating the misery of others to mitigate his own, so much so that multiple counselors had suggested he pursue a job as yet another dickless paper-pushing government bureaucrat. And now, no matter how much he'd sold himself to the state, no matter how many times he'd cooperated with the police to the point where he was taking it up the ass from them, they'd seen fit to make that first adjective literal.

"Come."

Said the nurse, as the door to the cell opened. But the tattletale just stood there, as one second became 5, which became 10. No tears, no tantrums, just silent, unblinking defiance.

"Come on Jordan, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way."

For the first time in his life, Jordan chose the hard way. But it was far too late for him, or any potential children he may have been hoping to father, for this futile attempt at fighting back did nothing more than convince the doctors to remove his claws and _all_ of his teeth, along with upgrading the scheduled procedure from the first of many MPA injection to full blown surgical removal of the gonads.

The incident also cut his social credit score in half.

* * *

SCP-618D-M:

Object Class: Safe

Containment Status: Contained, deteriorating.

SCP-618D-M is a set of five (5) digital photographs of of SCP-618C-M taken shortly after its discovery. Two also depict SCP-618-M, as it was in the immediate vicinity of SCP-618C-M at the time. Owing to the highly classified and highly disturbing nature of SCP-618C-M, the photos are only to be viewed by members of the O5 council (the beamjack who took the photos went insane shortly afterwards). It is reported that atheist O5 councilmen and religious O5's cannot agree on what they see in the photo, possibly because the photo itself is changing in the eyes of the viewer. Stranger still, when two of O5-2's corpses gazed upon SCP-618D-M, O5-2 reported that his two bodies were seeing different things in the image. Attempts by automaton O5's to view SCP-618D-M typically result in catastrophic failure of image recognition algorithms, rendering them incapable of seeing the photo at all when printed on paper. All automata who have tried to access the file directly report only a corrupted .txt file. Considering that every single computer science professor we interviewed insisted that such a thing was not possible (one even giving us a startlingly thorough explanation of file headers and image compression formats), we're not even sure how this can exist at all, let alone why it happens.

* * *

Somewhen in the 22nd century:

The magnificent perma-sunset sky stretched overhead, a spectacular band of red, orange, and yellow dominating the sky as they faded into a very dim magenta which spanned from horizon to horizon, where a feild of stars forever dominated the southern half of the twilight sky.

Ironically, it was the grown ups who were still transfixed by it, whereas the kids, for whom it had _always_ been there, were far more interested in the blades of grass, or the local wildlife, or, in the case of little Jasmine, a rather heated game of tag.

Her father, captain of this colony, had been in a rather sour mood today, to say the least: He'd been all stressed out about clouds and radioisotope fallout for the last 2 weeks, yet was now all serious and somber, as if he were the emcee of a funerary ceremony.

"You can tell me about your maytag worm later, but I need you to leave daddy alone right now. OK?"

And so she and her friends were here on the hill to the east, almost entirely ignorant of what was transpiring above them as they frolicked in the reddish-violet retinaldehyde grass.

"Tag!" Markus, who tended to get play a bit on the physical side, had pushed _way_ too hard on this one, causing Jasmine to tumble to the ground.

" _JERK!_ " She exclaimed, her eyes coming to gaze upon a tiny yet very bright dot that she assumed was the companion sol.

"Oh come on! I didn't push _that_ hard."

"Hey wait a second! Markus, I think mini-sol's _moving!_ "

"Jasmine, you're just seeing-"

The two fox kits gazed in awe. Whatever it was, it clearly wasn't the distant yet familiar companion star, and it _was_ moving, alarmingly fast, actually. And it was no mere dot, either: the object at which they stared was revealing itself to be an elongated, bulbous thing with smaller, spindlier bits twisting away from it in several directions, like a piece of cosmic shrapnel. Even after all these years spent coasting through the void, it was still shiny enough to be visible to half the system as it continued its downwards plunge past the trio of stars that dominated this world's sky.

Somewhere else in space, a much smaller metal cylinder was coasting on its own journey at such a speed that any measurement of distance taken in miles would be noticeably inaccurate before I could even finish saying the number, both because it was so far away that the number itself was enormous and therefore took long enough to read that the object would traverse quite a substantial distance before I could even finish, and because it was just going _that_ fast.

Yet this was but idling compared to the velocities it had been intended to attain. Alas, that was not to be. Ironically, despite being almost a century late, it was still travelling far too quickly to have any hope of sticking around its intended destination. And, having already passed periapsis, there was nothing left for it but a long goodbye and cold, dark eternity.

For decades now it had been sealed, and for so many more decades that they became centuries, which themselves became millennia, sealed it would remain. Even at a mere 0.039 _c_ , it was travelling fast enough (by over an order of magnitude, no less) that it could not only abandon its solar system, but eventually, its entire galaxy, condemned to drift forever through the void of intergalactic space.

But was this really true? "Forever" is a span of time so immense that for all practical purposes it is barely imaginable at best. One does not simply walk into a room, and one forever later, leave.

And of course, the truly hard part about doing _anything_ forever is the practical considerations: Micro singularities, motes of dust, ejected rogue planets, even now there was much in the void that could annihilate the _de-facto_ casket as it cruised the endless heavens, including the very same big rip that may or may not one day render every single subatomic particle unable to interact with any other, no matter how close they may have once been.

And if that didn't work, there was always a false vacuum collapse.

And if that didn't work, there was proton decay, slowly but surely ripping the object apart at the atomic level.

And if that didn't work, there was quantum tunneling and iron transmutation, leaving nothing more than an almost perfect sculpture of pure, elemental iron in place of the dead man who'd been placed within the cryotube, countless eons ago.

"Look!" Said Jasmine, as an antique debris cloud impacted the planet's atmosphere at mach 34961.22, inducing bits of shrapnel barely the size of a lightbulb to momentarily burn brighter than the sun.

* * *

SCP-618E-M:

Object Class: Safe

Containment Status: No containment necessary, currently training for Centauri-One

SCP-618E-M is a male red fox (vulpes vulpes), apparent age 31 years. Owing to the circumstances of SCP-618E-M's discovery, an exact age cannot be determined.

SCP-618E-M is the only known specimen to have survived prolonged exposure to SCP-618M, SCP-618A-M, and SCP-618B-M, and claims to have briefly known SCP-618A-M in the year 200_.

In accords with section 1 of the Witness Reintegration Act of 1981, SCP-618E-M has requested that all further files and data pertaining to SCP-618E-M be restricted on a need-to-know basis. As per section 2 of the Witness Reintegration Act of 1981, SCP-618E-M is not currently in Foundation Custody.

* * *

The 3rd of June, 2017, shortly after noon:

Dawn Bellwether of V-294, undead and aimlessly wandering her master's basement, was actually somewhat bored. She'd been tasked with keeping things running in the city, and so far, nothing requiring her intervention had transpired, whatsoever. Even now as she strolled through the extensive exhibits of Agamemnon's museum, nothing was happening.

She was currently standing in front of a musty old stuffed griffin's head, its once _regal_ blue feathers having faded to a dull purpleish-brown, like 100 year old construction paper (considering that it was at least an order of magnitude older, it was actually doing quite well for its age). Its beak hadn't fared much better, and was now a ghostly parchment color, cracked and dry rotting in slow motion.

Bellwether squinted at the plaque mounted below the stuffed head.

"θiˈɑfɪlʌs ˈθɪsəl ðə səkˈsɛsfəl ˈθɪsəl ˈsɪftər."

 _What?_ She thought, for what seemed the umpteenth time. Indeed, this was a common reaction on her part to the many trinkets and/or doomsday devices Agamemnon had in his lair. Even something as seemingly simple as the magic web that allowed you to intimately monitor and control the entire city was in reality very finicky and extremely technical:

"All I see is blurry nonsense." She'd said, having glimpsed Agamemnon's web of telepresence spells for the first time.

"Of course that is all you see, Dawn. This web allows you to be _any_ where at one time, but it does not make you _every_ where at once. You must take care to use it properly, or else it's no better a looking glass than an opaque pile of rocks. You asked me how little Nicholas managed to escape, in spite of this web, and the answer is quite simply that I wasn't looking for him at the time, and it therefore didn't show me. It was only after the police brought it to my attention that I even knew he'd been here. Just like grep, you need the right keywords to get anything worthwhile out of this old thing."

"What?" Said the apprentice necromancer, bringing the flashback to a close as she tried (and failed) to make sense of the plaque.

A voice, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once, tickled her ear.

"They never did learn my name."

It was raspy, subdued, almost imperceptible, and incalculably depressed. It was the sort of voice one could imagine belonging to a man who hadn't slept in 41,319 years, 8 months, 13 days, 23 hours, and 37 minutes.

"I suppose you could call me Pete. They all did."

Bellwether was startled. Standing in The Beast's trophy room of stuffed corpses, she had been certain that she was alone. She certainly hadn't seen any auras of the living, and although her rational faculties were aware of the fact that Agamemnon would keep anything that could actually harm her (or himself) under lock and key, her subconscious mind was nevertheless paralyzed by fear, an artifact of a lifetime of survivalist urges that now found themselves without a purpose. She returned to examine the plaque, glancing back up at the ancient griffin head.

It was staring daggers at her, its mummified face otherwise frozen in time.

She staggered back and fell on her ass as she scrambled to get away from it. As per the old joke, her corpse was now so rotten that instead of properly shitting herself, a pinch of dust was all that emerged from her desiccated tailhole. Her yelp, meanwhile, was many orders of magnitude louder than this mysterious voice, and it echoed incessantly throughout the chamber, reflecting and on occasion refracting from every last surface in the room. It was only after true silence was regained in the museum (a process that took well over 19 seconds) that it could speak again, and by this point, Bellwether had gotten over herself, and was staring in awe.

"Where have you gone? Please don't run away? It is so terribly lonely down here." Its voice did not echo at all.

"You're staring right at me-" The lamb spoke with a hint of annoyance, her voice rising as she became aware of all the other stuffed corpses and heads in the trophy room. "- _all_ of you. Don't you have anything better to do?"

But there was only her voice now, echoing. Soon it was joined by several thuds and a dull clak that signified colliding boulders, and the unmistakable sound of the striking of a match. A roughly humanoid shape, made entirely of rounded stones fished from a great river of yore, appeared in what had once been one of the many darker places in the trophy room (which like the rest of Agamemnon's lair was barely lit at all). Having lit a single candle in a lantern, it disposed of the match, and holding the lantern in its right hand, it lethargically approached them.

Most notably, it was missing a head.

And then it stopped, almost directly in front of the griffin's head. Stooping down, it proceeded to mop up Bellwether's dust in a manner that suggested the golemn was secretly judging her over it.

The thunderous golemn returned to its corner, taking a seat aside a taxidermied lagomorph jester, the golem promptly falling apart, back into the pile of stones and boulders from whence it rose.

"Fine." She said, as she turned to contemplate an ornamental piece consisting of the feathers of several peacocks. In its center sat a single iridescent golden scale that was half the size of a dinner plate, taken from the once great hide of Ajax the Terrible herself.

A different voice, haughty, joking, yet equally exhausted, arose from behind.

"We really don't, to answer your question."

"Well can you stop staring at me?!"

Silence ensued, disturbed only by her echoes.

"Really, _the silent treatment?_ " Were these nosy assholes going to actually talk to her or not?!

The jester was now scowling, the wooden stilts in its arm groaning as it made a "SHH!" gesture with its left hand, it ordering Bellwether to cease her disruptive mouth-words. The sheep was now unsure of her own safety here.

"Oh why don't _you_ shush?!"

Now the golemn had risen, and was stepping towards her. Bellwether stepped aside, thinking it had been summoned to clean, but much to her horror, it followed. She stepped back, and it followed. She panicked, hurrying to the other end of the room where the griffin's head was hung, but it followed. She screamed, and it very decisively lurched to cover her mouth, squeezing her jaw shut.

The golemn, who at this moment was first, foremost, and entirely concerned with the maintenance of the museum, pointed to a sign over the door, and left.

"Please do not disturb the exhibits. THAT MEANS **BE QUIET** , BELLWETHER!" It read.

The golemn gingery opened a jar, sucking every last ounce of noise from the room.

"So-" she whispered. "-I'm supposed to be quiet?"

"These eyes are glass." said the griffin, his voice _much_ quieter than the jester. "All light has gone."

After a _very_ pregnant pause, a response came in the draft, but it was not the fallen cryptid who spoke. "Mr ˈθɪsəl is now very tired." The undead lamb shifted her gaze upon the jester, who had once again struck a pose of sisyphean amusement, with just the slightest hint of concern (or was it sadness) staining his face, his glass eyes gazing elsewhere.

"He was once a demigod, you know. A legendary beast of yore, slain by _The Husk_."

Bellwether yawned.

"If our fates aren't _entertainment_ enough for you," the jester was now furious, yet utterly unable to scream. "I must suggest you inspect room #203e."

She was now quite confused. It almost sounded peeved at her, yet its eyes steadily avoided her. She waved her hooves in front of them, yet no reaction was to be seen.

" _Ma'am, those are glass eyes. None of us can actually see you_."

 _Very well then, off to 203e._ She gave them all the finger as she left.

Sometime later, Dawn Bellwether came across the notorious room, and had already engaged herself in furious speculation over its contents. Yet another stuck up talking head? Or would it be multiple shelves full of the stillborn in jars? Was this room home to a spittoon used by Lord Lucifer herself, or a diorama depicting the destruction of the mythical city of Atlantis? Maybe she'd find in that room an entire family of taxidermied foxes, seated at the table for thanksgiving?

Although virtually all of these things were to be found somewhere in Agamemnon's horrendous museum, none were to be found in room number 203e. By comparison, it was simple to the point of boredom: Two dim red lights stationed at the entrance, a lone rickety wooden door in an equally wobbly frame standing dead center, nothing else whatsoever to be found. But all was not as it seemed, for as Bellwether neared the door, a set of glowing amber runes appeared in the door. But alas, it was not the brilliant glow of an incandescent light, far from it. The runes were distorted, sloppy, and dim, and they flickered incessantly, as if they were broken. To add to this effect, the entire room was gradually filled with a buzzing sound that was far more appropriate to an old microwave oven that barely worked.

The zombified Bellwether stepped around it, noting that there was nothing on the other side. It was _just_ a door, sitting in the middle of a room, for no goddamn reason.

 _Does it even open?_

As Bellwether approached the door, a notable hint of saltwater tickled her nose, the muffled howling of wind joining the buzzing to form a queer cacophony that was starting to captivate her. She gripped the nob, gave it a _twist_ , and threw the door open.

Elsewhere in the museum, the Jester was telling a story to soothe the griffin. Having shared the hellish fate of permanent display, they had been friends for centuries, if only because they well and truly had nothing else to do.

"Now at this point," he said, each and every single word taking several seconds to say "our protagonist was getting rather frustrated, for there was not a single battery to be found in the entire marketplace."

"Noh one?" Somewhere within a large, _locked_ sarcophagus, there was the corpse of a long undead cursed priest who was missing a tongue and therefore spoke with a considerable lisp. Assuming he ever escaped the casket (not that _The Beast_ would ever allow this), he and his army of scarabs would give the SCP foundation _and_ the ZBAI a run for their money. But for now, the jester's epic story was the only distraction from the unending agony that was his own continued existence.

And, as the jester had started telling this particular story in the year 1871, it _was_ approaching epic length. Oh well, they had literally all of eternity to listen.

"Well, there had been plenty, until our strange friend Jeremy took them all, that is."

θiˈɑfɪlʌs ˈθɪsəl chuckled, his face not even moving by a so much as a nanometer. The last time that had happened, his jaw had fallen off, and Agamemnon had just glued it back on and wired it in place.

"Pardon me-" said the golemn "-That insufferable lamb has gone off and _dusted_ herself again."

"Don't worry-" said Imhotep the damned "-I'll fill you in if you missed anything." (although, missing a tongue and all, it sounded much more like "don wowwy, I ill ou ih ih ou mihed aheyin")

It marched down the hall to room 203e, muttering to itself as it went. "I don't get paid enough for this shit."

Bellwether, meanwhile, was on the other side, standing in the center of a very small island which was little more than a dusty patch of grass, surrounded by towering cliffs on all sides. Well over a kilometer below them was a raging sea, its waves pounding away beneath a sky that was one part prussian blue and two parts black. On this island, assaulted by wind that permeated in, through, and out of every last crack in her rotting skin, she was surrounded by doors, or more accurately what was left of them. Circular arrangements of doors, themselves nested like honeycombs. Yet all were broken, burnt, boarded shut, or missing. Only one door aside from her own remained here, and she was staring at it now. Her door was old and white, whereas this door was freshly painted and beige. Upon opening it, she was greeted by the sight of a tall spinning chair facing a wall of monitors and buttons.

The chair spun around, its occupant a spitting image of Bellwether (if she were still alive, anyway.).

" _Do_ close the door, please? The draft is terrible enough without it.

The living corpse obliged her counterpart, the lamb's heartbeat painfully audible to the necromancer's apprentice.

* * *

ADDENDUM 1: AUTHOR: DR. CLEF. Most of the known evidence of SCP-618's activity was been destroyed or corrupted by SCP-618B during incident Lamba-98. On the bright side, this finally convinced the O5's to install armed sentries at all evidence lockers, and we did get footage of SCP-618B from it...

ADDENDUM 2: AUTHOR: DR. CLEF. The sentries proved useless against SCP-618B, all previously mentioned footage of SCP-618B was destroyed. _Damn._

ADDENDUM 3: AUTHOR: DR. GEARS. It's a time-travelling _box_ goddamnit! Also, paragraph 2 needs revision.

ADDENDUM 4: AUTHOR: DR. BRIGHT. Dr. Gears, we've been over this: The existence of extraterrestrial civilizations is a well publicized fact, and has been _declassified_ for a number of years now. Their mention in paragraph 2 does not need to be censored.

ADDENDUM 5: AUTHOR: DR. GEARS. Old habits die hard.

ADDENDUM 6: AUTHOR: O5-2 "Derek". As of 7/19/2017, O5-2 is entirely unjustified in his assertion of SCP-618-M's sentience.

Addendum 7: AUTHOR: DR. BRIGHT. Dr. Bright bets $500 against SCP-618B-M. Dr. Gerald could kill it easily.

Addendum 8: AUTHOR: DR. BRIGHT's NIPPLES. As of 9/01/2018, There is exactly one android who _has_ seen the image. Stranger still, she claims to know exactly what it depicts, and that "it's all so clear." When asked to explain this opinion, the audio recorder spontaneously malfunctioned, and her attempt at explaining her interpretation drove all 3 present foundation personnel insane...Myself included. She has been asked not to try again. In other news, one of my turds is running for president. I personally think his economic policies are lamentably out of touch with the modern era. Oh no, here come the straightjacket people! "Back to the loony bin, ehh? You'll never take me alive!" I said as I was being dragged away, still editing this file using a tiny flip-phone that I concealed within my bladder. Never mind how I got the damn thing in there.

Addendum 9: AUTHOR: [REDACTED]. ASCII art provided by GlassGiant. Also, the _picorel_ is derived from the _rel_ , a Kaled unit of time that is roughly equivalent to 1.2 seconds. For various reasons, I had 3 chapters all nearing completion at the same time, and this is the last one for now. See you all in 2019, thanks for reading!


	20. Seeing Red, Part 1

Dear reader, all I can say is _wow_. I've been writing this story for two whole years now. And just like last time, the anniversary came and went with little fanfare.

On one hand, I'm sorry this took so long. Freshman year of college was _insane,_ but now the summer has returned, and I'll have much more time on my hands to write in the meantime. Then again, I've been working on this chapter since literally 2018, and I think it shows. This is easily the biggest chapter I've written, so big, in fact, that I've chosen to release it as a two-parter. Like the last few chapters, this one is full of what may seem to be pointless tangents. Then again, this _is_ a story about the multiverse, and as tempting as it was to fixate on Agent Raymond, it was only a matter of time before the rest of it started to show up. But don't worry, if it hasn't already, it will all tie up soon.

And hopefully, my next chapter won't take 6 goddamn months to compose. In the meantime, here's part 1 of chapter 20: _Seeing Red_

* * *

November 18th, 1720.

The bear heaved, hoisting the chest out of the rowboat with a considerable effort and an audible grunt.

"Yar, 'Erry up matey!" The fox was already shambling/waddling into the woods beyond the shore, his peg leg twisting his gait into a sort of step like that of a cartoon character.

"Arr, sorry cap'n, had to wipe the dirt off me spectacles."

"Yar, those stinkin' spectacles hain't worth the slime on a lovestruck harlot's pantaloons!"

"Ay, what's it with ye and slimy pantaloons?" Pirate Captain Robin "Calico" Jack, a vulpine who'd been born two-hundred and sixy-eight years too soon to partake in the summer of love, or otherwise benefit from the sexual revolution of the 60's, was powerless even to adequately explain his kinks, which formed a list of fetishes longer than his whiskers, let alone to have anyone else truly understand him. Not even "Blackbear" Johnathan Little Jr, his long time first officer and comrade in arms.

Speaking of, the bear passed him.

"Wait up ye scallywag!"

The bear, his once brown fur singed whitish by years sailing the seven seas, set the chest down. He was crusty, Calico Jack was crusty, and the chest especially had enough crust to bake pies for a ship full of ravenous pirates.

"Yar, tell ye what, laddie, methinks we bury it here!"

"Ay ay, cap'n!"

Blackbear[d] had dug exactly one spadefull of sand out of the way when his captain had noticed something.

"Avast!" he said "Aye smell trouble."

A fancy looking man in a fancier blue vest and an utterly ridiculous black hat that was only rivaled by his ridiculous accent was staring _espaldas_ at them.

"Stop! In the name of _el rey Philipe el quinto de españa_ I am placing you under arrest!"

Suddenly, hundreds of Spaniards (all wearing the same entirely impractical colonial uniform) emerged from the forests, surrounding the pirates on all sides with muskets.

" _Abrelo, abrelo!_ "

"Sorry fer' ye laddie, I don't speak French."

"I SAID OPEN THE CHEST!"

The chest was opened, casting a gilded reflection upon the their faces. Doubloons by the thousands filled the chest to its brim, a pair of lady's pantaloons adorning the otherwise magnificent pile of wealth.

" _¡Dios mio!_ "

The _caballero_ _capitan hermoso_ who'd apprehended them removed his glove at once, slapping Calico Jack across the face with it repeatedly.

" _¡Hijo de puta!_ " he snarled "¡Matalo _pulpo_ , mata los ambas!"

And so, the pirates were slain, right there, Calico Jack gazing upon the spoils of his most recent panty raid one last time before sinking into Davy Jones' locker. The pantaloons, of course, were haphazardly thrown aside as they buried the pirate scumbags in a shallow, unmarked pit in the very clearing where they'd planned on burying the treasure, as if to taunt the spirit of Calico Jack with a lust that would never again be consummated. As for the treasure, it was hauled onto a ship, which promptly sank.

* * *

 **Shortly before noon, December 19th, 1998.**

 **The town of Nottingham, V-137:**

The tweenage fox, the aftertaste of strawberye cuskynoles still staining his mouth, was now on foot, standing and staring in awe as a travelling bard danced, played his accordion, and sang one of his many songs, all at the same time. The song in question had a rythm not unlike a horse performing a combination of galloping and jumping in a microgravity environment. Two notes in rapid succession, followed by a short pause, followed by two more notes, followed by a long pause. Repeat.

Oh-we can-dance...oh-we can-sing...

Oh-we can-dance till our-graves are filled...

Oh-we can-dance...oh-we can-sing...

And-I can-act like an-im be-cile.

Oh-we can-dance...oh-we can-sing...

Be-cause your-friends don't dance and if they-don't dance well-they're...no friends of-mine.

Once in a while, the attributes of multiple realities will converge. When this happens with people, we call the resulting persons counterparts. Counterpartism, however, is hardly limited to people. Even though they are being recited by completely different artists, and fell within entirely dissimilar genres, the song of the bard and _Safety Dance_ were as much counterparts as Raymond the Runaway and Nicky the Stay-Behind. Different in multitudinous ways, yet eerily similar all the same.

Even though it was merely a folksy jig accompanied by an accordion, and not the blazing, upbeat, overclocked, techno-synth of its counterpart, this music was one of the most downright exciting things the recently escaped Raymond had ever heard in his life! Considering that the tame collars were only _one_ of the many things that sucked about V-293 (which we shall soon see), this was hardly a surprise. The collars existed to punish people for their emotions, and equally restrictive government agencies had made it their mission to squeeze the soul out of every single art form they could get their grubby, declawed, sterilized, lobotomized, circumcised, mind-controlled mitts on, lest the predators in their midst go _savage._

And since you needed a licence (and _armed_ security personnel) to play anything more exciting than Muzak in a public venue, they'd arguably succeeded. Suffice it to say that George Carlin would've had a goddamn _field day_ with their society. But Raymond was on another world now, one that played by entirely different rules. Here, smiling with your teeth wasn't a felony. Here, a predator, such as the bard, could actually _dance_ to the music, in front of a crowd that wouldn't be arrested for raising the roof.

And try as he might, Raymond simply could not pry his eyes from the bard, his red silhouette contorting in a way that was entirely alien to him, yet relatable all the same, as most repressed emotions are.

* * *

Agamemnon the Bottomless Stomach sat in His windowless mobile command center, the omnipresent monitors, oscilloscopes, indicator LED's and screens conspiring to bathe The Living Corpse in an omnipresent phosphor-green glow as He fidgeted with a toothpick. Perched atop its seemingly endless concrete rail, the silver train shot past a small town with an economy that was steadily dwindling, much like the life force of The Sentient Pile of Mistakes within. And within this small town there was an ironically large school building, a deteriorating relic of the 50s that had been partly constructed from the very same steel this town had once smelted, back before _they_ took all the jobs.

"Never mind who _they_ are, that don't matter at all. Not one bit. All I need to know is that the 40,000 year old human who brainwashes me through His puppets on the TV says I should hate them, just like He says I should hate those _assholes_ who root for any football team that ain't mine. _They_ and _their_ different goddamn football teams. FUCK _THEM_ , WHOEVER THE FUCK _THEY_ ARE." Said all the old farts at every bar, himself but an abstraction in a sociologist's mind, a metaphor for just about anybody and everyone who lived in this town and hundreds like it, scattered all over flyover regions where the horizon was by far the most significant geological feature.

"Darn straight." Said his equally metaphorical living caricature of a friend, who was still too much of a stuck up prude to actually say "damn", even as the small army of people he symbolized, represented, or otherwise spoke for drank themselves to an early death at the tender age of whatever the hell the life expectancy was here divided by 2, plus 7, in that order. "Could _they_ jus' do us all a favor and stop _existing?_ That would be _wonderful_." Of course, none of the people he stood for actually said these words, yet in a way, it was what all of them meant.

Meanwhile, the sun was now soaring above the horizon, and outside the ticking asbestos time bomb that was the school, a pair of PE teachers were marshaling the next batch of 1st graders to the corner of a soccer field as they prepared to embark upon the legendary quarter-mile run. Why did they have to run each year? Why did they only _get_ to run this one time per year? And why did they ratchet up the distance by a quarter mile per year?

The little ferret hardly knew why, nor did he know anyone who _did_ know, and furthermore he would never get to know. The slowest runner of the last batch, he crossed the line and collapsed, his breath coming and going in alarmingly shallow panting while his neck, ensnared in a collar with a shocker unit so big it was almost a second head, burned like hell. Although this world's "doctors" continued to deny it, it is a known fact within the consortium that TAME collars not only readily induce CPTSD and semi-permanent brain damage in their victims, but can also increase one's odds of a heart attack by multiple orders of magnitude. Doubly so if the collaring age had been reduced to _6_ , a measure this county had voted to ratify (as opposed to the 12-year collaring age in the city). This, combined with many other factors, all but guaranteed that a predator on this world would die well before they could retire, both because half of them didn't make it to 60, and because those who did survive were so thoroughly and systematically discriminated against that they had no hope of ever getting their stubby, mutilated hands on enough cash to retire in the first place. Indeed, it was alarmingly common for inner city predators to just _drop dead_ on the job, much like the little ferret who was still gasping for breath, his little body sprawled out on the grass, writhing like Frankenstein's monster being brought to life as the collar continued to punish him for what at this point was a fight or flight response to the collar itself, each and every bolt of electric agony pushing him and his heart that much closer to never getting up again. Indeed, his older sister, who had been electrocuted to the point of cardiac arrest after achieving her first and only orgasm, had died in exactly this fashion 5 months ago. Her frigid, frozen smile had been burned into his brain, alongside a pair of bloodshot eyes that would haunt him forever.

"It's her fault." The mortician had said, as he aimed the camera. "She knew better than to push it too quickly."

Elsewhere, this time in a maternity ward, a doctor walked in.

"When left unchecked," he began "these sorts of urges are ticking time bombs." This brochure was decorated with the image of yet another smiling teenage corpse, and the doctor gestured to its teeth, bared in a final display of savagery. "Perhaps there _was_ a time when these untamed things served us well, but civilization _requires_ that we restrain ourselves and subdue our urges. It's...well, you know, it's the _modern_ thing to do, and I'd get it over with _now_ if I were you."

The doctor handed a mother a streamlined consent form, a pen, and a brochure.

"Doctor?"

"Yes?"

"It might just be the pain meds, but I'm pretty sure I have a _daughter_ , not a _son_."

"Oh, whoops!" Said the doctor, as he swapped out the brochure for a pamphlet on clitorodectomy. This time, it was none other than the corpse of our little mustelid's older sister who prominently adorned its cover.

And what of the tortured ferret? Slowest runner in the class, he'd completed the run in just under 3 minutes. _Pathetic_. Agamemnon's silver specially chartered monorail train, meanwhile, traversed a similar distance in just 4.5 seconds. And while the ferret, who himself was not even 4.5 seconds away from having an asthma attack, could barely breathe, Agamemnon was...well...as relaxed as someone like Him ever could be, semi-casually conversing with Bellwether through the crystal ball.

"So as I was saying, once you've got all the hizzards out of the way, you can then set the cardinal grammeter to mode 7. For the spell to work, however, it's _crucial_ that you don't let your spurving bearings overheat, lest it cause the prefabulated amulite to-"

The debug console appeared on The Gangrenous Abomination's crystal ball, almost like it were a popup on a porn site: **"TARGET 19B6 FOUND."**

 _What?..._ He was at a loss to explain the message.

Where the first line had been, a new one now took its place, this line resembling a JVM's desperate attempt to display an instance of a class with no toString() method: Namely, several dozen symbols, numbers and letters, followed by yet more debug dialogue. **"DEPLOYING."** it said.

 _Wait a second..._ And, indeed, it was only a second before Agamemnon remembered what it was.

"Holy shit, she _actually_ found him!" He said, frantically switching the crystal orb from Bellwether and her glorified chemistry set to an overhead view of a rabbit in a somewhat dusty ZPD uniform entering a tent. The camera followed, bringing the eye of The Insatiable Hunger face to face with the runaway fox who'd done the impossible.

"What?" Said Bellwether, who wasn't getting any of this.

"Sorry, I've got to focus on this right now." Agamemnon hung up the call almost without even noticing, his hands lunging for the control panel as his mind's eye turned towards Agent Raymond. By this point, Judy Hopps was little more than the skin covering a well programmed machine. Perhaps its ego had to be reminded of who its master was after a decade on standby, but nevertheless the id below obeyed his every command. Ordinarily, her Master would just have watched. But Raymond was a shifty little bastard, and as per the old saying about wanting something done right, this was the closest The Beast could get to doing it himself. He only hoped that his machine would get it done, although with the joysticks in His capable hands, He had a decent shot.

The audience screamed as the rabbit in the crystal ball lunged for Raymond, who'd somehow managed to dodge her SIDE + B. But she was up in an instant, claws out and ready to pounce as a strange looking dingo fired a pair of bullets into her head, sending waves of static onto The Beast's crystal ball. Undeterred, He channeled His own mana through the wires, expunged the bullets, and, charging up far more strength than one would think was possible, He sent His puppet stampeding for the dingo as fast as He could, the dingo firing her P-99 once more before the metaphorically iron foot of Judy Hopps sent the literally iron Georgina flying. Meanwhile, Agent Milton, whose aim was noticeably worse than the dingo's, had taken her place in firing upon the rabbit. A charged bolt of white-hot plasma leapt from the gun with a sound more like a _bark_ than a _bang!_ , and struck her so hard that Agamemnon somehow tasted iron in His mouth, half a multiverse away.

But it was not enough to stop the possessed husk. For that, you needed to attack the puppeteer, for so long as He remained safe, He could just drag His puppets right back up and-

An earsplitting sawtooth whine shrieked in his ears, pounding one of the worst headaches that Agamemnon had ever experienced right through His skull like a speeding diamond-tipped freight train.

For a split second, He let go.

For a split second, He was no longer in control.

And as quickly as it began, it ended, The Parasite's hands once again lunging for the joysticks like they were some poor kid's neck, regretting it almost instantly as Georgina's tasers sent both puppeteer and puppet into hysterics, Agamemnon writhing and spasming behind His screens in a manner that invited itself to being compared to the final, futile struggle of an innocent man on the electric chair. Or, more specifically, He squirmed in his chair like the late Jack Savage, as a pair of mad scientists bored a hole in his head, raped his mind, and stole _all_ of his secrets, all while grinding his brain into a pulp.

Forcing Himself to see through her eyes one last time, in spite of the pain, he commanded his hex to flee the scene of what was now obviously a lost battle, 20 years of mind-control roots tearing themselves out all at once as a rogue wizard sucked half of them into that damned crystal of hers. On one hand, if he'd been there for real, in person, he could've _exterminated_ not only everyone in the tent, but everyone else within 100 meters of the tent. Then again, shit like this was exactly why he almost never did his own dirty work anymore. However much time or effort he poured into his puppets, they were still _infinitely_ more disposable than himself.

But He had no time for such matters, for the game was still afoot, and he had to flee if he wished to maintain _any_ advantage. Fortunately, a rotting cesspool of anger was there, burning like a 60-watt bulb in the metaphorical darkness through which his hex, having wrenched itself from its former host, was now dragging itself.

 _Behold, the lord hath NO MERCY on those heathens._

Here it was, truly a diamond in the rough! A man so _corrupted_ by hate that he was practically cumming in his pants at their screams. And not only was he a hopelessly angry fellow, but he was also a thoroughly brainwashed one at that. Granted, Agamemnon wouldn't even be able to come _close_ to doing with him what He had done to Judy, far from it. By the time He'd abandoned the rabbit's corpse, she'd been little more than a glove for His hand. This man, meanwhile, was far more akin to a housebroken slave, one who merely obeyed orders, rather than acting as a proper extension of oneself.

But even so, He was certainly worth keeping around for the time being. And to this end, Agamemnon ordered his voodoo majik spell to latch onto the priest's mind like a rabid headcrab, before setting it to hibernate for the next hour or so. Sure, he could've tried something _now_ , but with Reynard the Witch alerted to his presence and on high alert, he had to be very careful with his next move, for so long as they did not know of this new pawn of his, Agamemnon would still maintain a degree of surprise.

So focused was he on his little puppet that Agamemnon the Parasite had failed to notice that he was currently on fire. Until now, anyway. Shrieking in surprise, he flopped around and rammed into every solid thing he could find, desperate to extinguish the flames as he strangled them in his mind's eye, the fire tearing from his flesh like velcro and crumpling up into a little ball which he dispelled with the snap of a somewhat charred finger.

Looking around at the aftermath, the full gravity of the situation struck him at once: His flesh had been tarnished, his control room was a mess (several of the CRT monitors having exploded during the fight, littering the floor with broken glass), one of his puppets had been gutted, and worst of all, not only had Raymond gotten away, _again_ , but now the shifty ginger bastard _and_ all of his buddies knew he was after them! This would complicate matters considerably.

Seething with rage, Agamemnon reached for the intercom button. "Stop the train."

"What?"

He didn't have time for this shit. Venturing forth with his mind's eye, he ensnared the engineer's brain stem and quite literally _forced_ his body to yank on the emergency brake, bringing the silver train, which was now many miles outside of the town, to a halt that was as abrupt as it was loud (complete with sparks coming from the wheels).

 _ **SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE**_

Donning a pair of shades, Agamemnon's rational facade was already cracking as the rage roared within. He threw open the door, and stepped into the forest...

Elsewhere in the woods, an elk in his 40's by the name of Eli Whitford was sneaking through the woods. A long time outdoorsman and an avid hunter, Whitford had recently come across a trail, and was following it with great interest, only to be disturbed by a distant, ear-piercing scream. It was truly like nothing he had every heard in his life: Guttural, booming, and plunging through the octaves, echoing through the trees like the battle cry of a horde of demons.

Eli swore he could feel a pair of eyes staring at him. They were everywhere, whispering the musings of a primordial evil.

A branch snapped behind him, prompting the elk to turn around.

The color fled from his vision in an instant, his sanity abandoning him but a moment later as he made eye contact with The Thing. In this state it was at its most vulnerable, yet also at its most powerful, for it had abandoned its shell: Naked in this mortal plane, the babbling mess of neurons that had once known the name of Eli had not encountered a mask, a suit, a thing stitched together from stolen flesh. No, he had come face to Face with The Real Deal, The Abomination itself, in the flesh, nothing more than a pair of Ray Bans and 30 feet of air separating Eli from Imminent Demise. Cold, sterile, hollow sunlight scattered through its pale, wrinkly, bald skin, as its jaw unhinged in such a way that it would be more accurate to describe the gaping maws of snakes as mere imitations of the one and only Bottomless Void, Agamemnon, Devourer of Worlds. Eli had been told to expect a light when he perished, but all he saw now was the pale crimson of The Insatiable Stomach's mouth, as he was surrounded on all sides by an orchestra of the damned, ceaselessly screaming in unison as their partially molten bodies struggled against the scarlet chains that bound them. There would be no rest, peaceful or otherwise, for Eli Whitford. _Only pain._

Meanwhile, back in the bowels of the city of Zootopia, Dawn Bellwether, who had cleared her cutting board of all the hizzards, was now at a loss at what to do next.

"OK, _think_ Bellwether! What did he say?...Hizzards cleared...cardinal whatsit to _8?_ "

Reaching out for the black bakelite dial on the cardinal grammeter, she set it to mode 8. Unfortunately for Bellwether, this particular grammeter had _not_ received VX Service Pack 3, and therefore ran on faulty drivers that caused the modial reluctance capacitor to misfire, underflowing the triple boolean decatron to 0. This admittedly trivial misfunction wasn't all that bad by itself, but unfortunately, the triple boolean decatron had also been configured earlier in the ritual to control the blade angles within the hydraulic arithmetic complex vector converter and logic unit (Agamemnon was almost as bad at naming his machines as the inhabitants of V-002 "Gedvín"). Thus, when the decatron underflowed, it prompted the complex vector converter to assume a self-refuting gear ratio, which promptly refuted itself, thereby freeing the panametric drive shaft to spin at an unconstrained rate that rapidly approached 0.479c. The spurving bearings that supported this drive shaft, however, were not designed with operating at half the speed of light in mind, and therefore overheated damn near instantly. This had three main consequences: First, the bearings themselves exploding in a flamboyantly pink cloud of smoke. Second, they perturbed the prefabulated amulite, causing it to assume an excited and alchemically unstable degenerate state.

For reasons that I'm not going to even _pretend_ are pseudo-scientific, the now unstable amulite chose to decay in such a way that it transmuted the little asthmatic ferret's head into a flowerpot. Specifically, it had turned his head into a bowl of petunias. The little ferret, of course, was still fully conscious, had felt everything, and was now in far too much pain to be thinking anything at all, let alone "Oh no, not again!", or any other sort of musing on the caustic, _ad hoc_ nature of magic in fiction. He tried to scream, but instead began to choke to death on the rather loose dirt that had replaced his tongue. Even as he continued to writhe in the agony of asphyxiation, as the carbon dioxide poisoning worsened by the second, a man with a camera was already standing over the jittering corpse, taking the photo that would one day adorn a series of brochures advising parents to opt for total neonatal caniumectomy, lest their children have their heads spontaneously replaced with bowls of petunias.

"God?"

No response. Only laughter.

"They told me that you had a plan for me, for my life."

It stopped. "Yes. I did."

" _And?_ "

"Your life was a joke, and your rather atypical demise was the _perfect_ little punchline! A cherry atop an otherwise _dreadfully_ boring episode."

A megalomaniacal fit of sourceless giggling followed, leaving the poor little ferret to stand by his flabbergasted lonesome (not that he'd lived long enough to learn either word).

" _Why?!_ "

"Entertainment, my dear sir, _entertainment!_ The show must go on!"

Somewhere, beyond the pearly gates, a lever was pulled, causing the gates themselves to slam shut as a trapdoor to hell swung wide open. Our rather unfortunate mustelid screamed as he plunged, only to be silenced by a jolt from his collar.

(Oh yeah, they still make you savages wear TAME collars in heaven. HAHaHaHaHahahahaHAhAhaHaHahaHahaHaHAHAHahaHAHahaHahAhaHAhAhAhAHAhAHahahaHLOLOLOLOLAhaHahaHahAhAHahaHaHAhAhAHAhAHaHaHAHaHAhAHaHahahaHAHahaHahaHaHAhAhAhahahAhahALOLOLOLOLHAhAHAHAHAHahAhAhaHahAhAhaHahahAHAHaHahAhAHaHAhAHAHahAHahAHAHAHahaHaHAHahAhAHaHAhaHAhAHahAHaHAhahAhaHAhaHAhahAhAHAHAhAHaHahaHAHAhahAHaHaHaHaHAhaHAhahAHAhahahAhaHAHaHaHAHaHahAhAHahAhAhahAHAhAhLOLOLOLOLahAHahAhahahahAhaHaHAhAHahahaHahAHaHAHAhAhahaHaHAhaHaHAhAHAhAHaHaHAHahAHAhAHLOLOLOLOLAhAHaHAHWHyAreYOurEAdInGtHISAHAHAhAhahaHAhahaHaHahAHAHaHAhaHahaHahAHAhAhAhAHahAhAHAHahaHahaHahaHAhaHahAhAHaHAhAhAhaHahAhAhahAHahAhaHaHahAHAhahaHLOLOLOLOLAHaHAhahahAHAhahAhahahahaHAHahaHahaHahaHAHAHAHLOLOLOLOLAhahAHAhahAhAhAhaHahAHahAhAHaHaHahAHahAhAhAhAHAHAhAHAHAHAHAHahaHahAHahAHahAhAHahahAHaHaHAboNUspOiNTsIfyoUinCLUDEThewORdpeanutINyOURrEViEWhaHaHAhahAHahaHAHahahahAHAhAhahAHaHAhAHaHaHaHAhahAHAHaHaHAHahahahahahAhAHahAhAhaHAHaHahALOLOLOLOLhAHahaHAHAHAHAHahaHAhahaHAHAHAhahaHAhahaLOLOLOLOLhahahAHAhahAHAHaHAhahaHaHAHAHaHaHAHahAHAhAhahAHAHAhAHAHahaHaHahahahahAhaHahahAHahAhaHaHaHAhaHAhAHaHahaHAHAHahAhaHahaHaHAhAHAHAhAhahALOLOLOLOLhaHaHahAhahahahahAHAhAHAhaHAhAhaHaHAhahAHAHaHAhAHahAHaHAhaHahAHahAHaHahaHahahAhahAHahAHahahAHAHaHaHAhAHaHAHAHahAhAHahaHAhAHaLOLOLOLOLHahAHAHaHAha)

The ferret suddenly impaled himself on a giant rusty nail that sat on the floor, having evidently reached the bottom of Hell itself, while up above, perched over the hole, sat God, who was still laughing. He was soon joined by the entire heavenly court, and they proceeded to point, laugh, or otherwise throw peanuts at him for all of eternity.

Meanwhile, back in her Master's basement, the third consequence, a fairy tale character brought to life who happened to go by the name of Jeremy Fischer, emerged from the pink cloud of smoke, and much to the astonishment of apprentice necromancer Dawn Bellwether, he grabbed the crystal ball and bolted, laughing all the way as he quite deliberately phased through a wall and ran through the omnipred's museum, knocking the stuffed head of a humiliated demigod off the wall while doing so. The once majestic beak of Theophilus Thistle crumpled like a lithobraking concorde as it impacted the floor, sending thousands of rotting shards everywhere. Although old Theo the gryphon was still technically alive, he was powerless to do anything more than scream internally as what was left of his beak crumbled to dust before his glass eyes. Indeed, as the wooden internal structure had been broken by the impact, the leathery skin of Theo's head was now beginning to cave in on itself, as if it were a deflating basketball. The deathless demigod dreaded the day he'd finally crumble to dust, once and for all.

Agamemnon's train, meanwhile, was back up to speed, Agamemnon himself holding a microphone in his hand as he gazed upon a diagnostic oscilloscope display that was connected to the firewire port of his pscionic wrench. Sure, a screwdriver would have been classier, but no matter how _sonic_ it is, you can't exactly bash someone's skull in with a screwdriver, can you? A wrench, meanwhile, in the hands of an experienced serial killer, could easily bring death to the doorsteps of dozens of people. At any rate, he'd done some poking around with what remained of his mind-control hex, and now he had a plan.

"Gregory..."

"Wha?"

" _Gregory..._ "

"Who goes there?!" The priest was startled, to say the least. This wasn't the _first_ time he'd heard a voice in his head, but it hadn't sounded like this one at all.

 _Shit._ Agamemnon reached for one of the many knobs on his audio mixer. _Perhaps he's expecting something more...cosmic_. Agamemnon increased the reverb by 500% and pitch-shifted his voice by half an octave, as he cued up an image of a grumpy old man on the slide projector.

" **It is I,** " He said, His voice now _booming_ like a trumpet. " **Gre-** "

"Begone, _demon!_ "

Abandoning the audio mixer, he reached for a nearby keyboard, typed "POKE 59458,62" into it, and instructed the pscionic wrench to beam the command. One need not mind their P's and Q's when one is mind controlling their subordinate, after all.

" _ **I am who I am, Gregory!**_ " Cupping his hand over the mic, he chuckled. Agamemnon could remember committing that exact line to papyrus, _way_ back in the day. He and an old soothsayer had been sitting in a tent that day, making yet another round of revisions to the manuscript. This particularly cryptic quote had been her idea.

"My lord!" Father Greg was on his knees in an instant. "Please forgive me, for I did not recognize you."

Once again blocking the mic, he let out a sigh. Even after over 20 centuries, her face, the raw heat of the sun, and even the grit of the desert sand upon which they had once rested, were all still fresh in his mind. _God_ he missed Barbara.

" **Never mind that, Gregory. I imagine you must wonder why I speak to thee now.** "

"As a matter of fact I do." As a matter of fact, he hadn't heard a voice in his head for over 4 years. Not that he wasn't listening, on the contrary: he'd interpreted their abscence as further evidence of the existence of the god he'd confused them for. Indeed it was very much a "heads I win, tails you lose" sort of situation with this one.

" **The rumors, Gregory, art thou familiar with the rumors?** "

"Is not gossip a sin?"

" **Yes it most certainly is. And you _are_ familiar with the rumors?** " This was hardly the first time Agamemnon had played fast and loose with the rules. He'd probably said such a thing thousands of times.

"Of course my lord." Fortunately, father Greg appeared to be _that_ kind of priest.

" ** _Excellent,_ and what do they say?** "

"Are you speaking of the rumor that says we conspired to murder King Richard and get his fundamentalist son into power?" Judging by the half rectified purple triangle wave on the oscilloscope, this one was not only true, but a truth that Father Greg _really_ hoped to keep under wraps.

" ** _No._** " The purple began to fade to grey.

"Or do you mean the one about Robin Hood's alleged mistress and bastard child?" Dancing curves of green schadenfreudic comedy dotted the screen.

" _ **Closer...**_ "

"Wait, were you referring to rumors of a sodomite in our town?" As he said this, the spirograph flattened out to the telltale pink square waves of revulsion that was as indignant as it was abstract. They were self amplifying, and in less than a second they were already off the charts, every last second of Father Greg's brainwashing clearly on display. Judging by what His instruments told him, if He hadn't found the priest's actual berserk button, he'd gotten awfully close to it. It was good enough, in any case.

" _ **Yes, that's the one.**_ **Gregory, you have been my faithful servant for-** " Agamemnon paused to scan through Father Greg's memories for the exact dates. After trying several g/re/p commands, He gave up. " **- _many_ years, and through these years of faith you have proven your devotion to me.** "

"Thank you my lord!" The line on the monitor was now bright yellow and undulating downwards at random.

" **And it is because of this devotion that I entrust upon you this secret.** "

"What is the matter, my lord?" The yellow was now brown. Time for _very serious business._

" **The rumors, Gregory, they are true.** "

"Robin Hood has a bastard child named Archibald Dorothy Meatpants the third, _Esquire?!_ "

Agamemnon paused, cupping his hand over the mic for the third time. "What kind of sick weirdo came up with _that_?"

" ** _NO, GREGORY, THE FAGGOT!_** "

"So there _is_ a homosexual in our town of Nottingham..." The pink of indignation was back, and was now slightly more pointy.

" **And will you do what must be done?** "

"Without question, my lord."

 _Perfect. Absolutely perfect._

" **Then I shall tell you... _Gideon_. The faggot's name is _Gideon Grey_.** " The rounded square wave snapped to the iridescent scarlet sawteeth of red hot hatred in an instant as the oscilloscope itself began to growl. Once again, the now murderous rage began to self-amplify.

"The blacksmith?!"

" **Yes, the blacksmith! _You know what to do, Gregory._** "

Indeed, he did. Images of glowing orange pokers were already dancing through his head. Assuming his efforts succeeded, Agamemnon estimated the poor blacksmith had less than an hour to live, although possibly more, however, if the priest was really _that_ sadistic.

Agamemnon checked. Much to his pleasure, he saw that yes, indeed, Father Gregory _was_ that sadistic, as evidenced by an electric _BANG!_ , followed by a shower of red-hot sparks of pure hatred that emerged from the side of the oscilloscope.

* * *

"The first person to climb Mount Everest did so accidentally while chasing a bird."

I mean, it was one hell of a bird.

Tiny little speck, that's all it was at first, all floating above even the highest cirrus clouds and what not. Hell, you couldn't even see it half the time without a set of binoculars. But it was always there, floating about in the breeze as if it didn't have the slightest care in the world. But once in a while, _good ol'_ θiˈɑfɪlʌs ˈθɪsəl would literally and figuratively descend from the heavens and just _bless_ us with his presence.

Although I just called him Theo the Asshole, 'cuz that's what he was: Forget about thistle sifting, this guy was just _the worst_ : A big-time, grade-A, _major league_ , spoiled rotten, no good _IBS_ demigod asshole.

Yes, you read that right: The blue bastard had fucking _Irritable Bowel Syndrome_. Yeah, not only would he cause the earth to quake wherever he went as he set forests aflame with his lightning, or turn people into dogs, or wake you up at 3 in the goddamn AM with his godawful yodeling, or just casually send in _category six_ typhoons and 100 meter tsunamis miles inland for the lulz, no, that was never enough. That indigo fucker also had _severe_ IBS and a personality more addictive than black tar heroin. This meant, _of course,_ that _not only_ would he fuck _everything_ up as he came, but that he'd also shit all over everything as he left. Yeah, imagine that, you're stuck in the worst sort of storm imaginable, the kind of storm where it hails. Sideways. At over 100 MPH. _In fucking July._

Only it's not hail. Just let that stink-

You know what, I meant to say _sink_ , but I think I'm going to let that little Freudian slip stay. Yeah, let that _stink_ in for a moment. My god, even Loki had _some_ self control, but this guy? Good fucking luck. "Oh don't mind me, just gonna' stop at the Taco bell and down _every bottle of tabasco sauce in the building_ before I carpet bomb an area the size of Texas with my homebrew Geneva Convention violation."

No, I'm not kidding, good ol' Theo the Asshat actually did that one time. He literally made it rain shit across the entire fucking state of Texas. And he didn't even pay for the goddamn sauce! That's how much of a captial-a _**ASSHOLE**_ he was.

 _God I fucking hate that guy._

So one early fall day, the leaves are just beginning to turn red, and I'm in a meadow at my easel, painting, and I've used up all the white paint on my palette. So I reach around behind me, grab the tube, dispense some more, and when I turn back around, there's a big steaming pile of gastrointestinal thermite melting a hole though my painting _and_ my easel, while Theo the Asshole floated about all willy nilly while giggling like a six year old who's just heard somebody say "penis".

Did I mention that I hate this guy? Because between this and some cheeky fox bastard who stole my tube of alizarin crimson earlier that day (he probably thought it was food) this was the last straw.

The last.

Fucking.

Straw.

So what did I do? I'll tell you what the fuck I did, I fucking murdered his ass. Yeah, I chased him down and ripped that leaking portal to hell under his tail inside out, that's what I did, and that douchelorde deity deserved it too, boy did he of all people deserve it! I mean, Theo was the kind of shitheaded asshat who used the entire world as his cumbucket, and now, rumor has it that he's _literally_ a trophy on a goddamn wall, condemned to collect dust forever.

Serves him right, asshole!

Of course, exacting my...

You know what, I'm not even going to _pretend_ that what I did to him was justice. No bullshit, we're calling a spade a spade, OK, because _**brutally ripping him a new one**_ was a whole order of magnitude easier said than done, because like I said, it was one _hell_ of a bird: Aside from being a demigod on Earth, he was also a northdrake gryphon with 9 inch diamond-tipped claws and wingspan of almost 50 feet. I mean, he wasn't a full blown eldritch abomination or a personified XK-class end of the world scenario or anything, but he sure wasn't going down without a fight. Hell, just catching up to him was hard enough, even if you _do_ belong to a species notorious for literally running its prey to death.

Oh yeah, way back before you lot gained sentience, that's exactly what we'd do: Torches in hand, we'd give chase, and they'd run, and we'd catch up and chase them some more, and they'd run again, and then we'd do it over and over until the poor suckers dropped dead from exhaustion. Like this one time, back when I was a teenager, me and a few friends chased a herd of mammoths for 16 hours straight! Eventually, the entire tribe wound up besieging a mother and her injured calf, and we just sat there, getting in any attack we could and waiting it out until the mother bled to death two days later.

Come to think of it, that might have been the last time I ever saw a mammoth. They used to be everywhere you know, and then, they vanished. _Poof._

Still, spending every waking minute chasing that damn bird was about as fun as it sounds, and although there were a few near misses as days became weeks, it ultimately took me almost a month to even get a single hit in against that son of a bitch, let alone _kill_ him.

By this point, I'd chased him all the way the the fjords of Scandinavia, where old Theo the Asshat had taken a pitstop to incinerate an entire fleet of viking ships. And while he was distracted, I had my golemns spread across the shore, harpoons in hand to launch on my signal. Y'all should've seen the look on his face! One minute he was there, the arrogant douchebag raining hell upon the armada below, and then he sees me, and there's this one little moment when he knows what's about to happen, and that even He, The Oncoming Storm, the Sovereign Lord of Thunder, can do nothing to stop it. _That was his face._ Of course, it was only for a moment. Next thing he knew, all 4 of my stone soldiers had deployed the harpoons, the buzzing steel hooks ensnaring his wings as the living statues struggled to yank that bastard right out of the sky! I, meanwhile, had lit a fuse, which was connected to two roughly cylindrical containers filled with a substance that I can only describe as highly concentrated explodium.

By the way, have any of you fine mammals ever been to China? Well, you should, because there was this merchant guy, and I'm still not sure how the hell he did it (and coming from _me,_ that's really saying something), but he was the one who made the explodium. Anyway, I had this super charged explodium stuff, and like the invincible, nigh-unstoppable human jackass that I am, I strapped it to my back and lit the damn things. So while my golemns were harpooning old Theo, I was charging with a stick in hand, ready to vault into the sky and slice right through-

"Excuse me-" said Reynard the cross dressing witch "-but what does _any_ of this have to do with the _thing_ that's coming here to rip _us_ all a new one?!"

Consortium Agent Nicholas Raymond Wilde, who until now had been ravenously devouring a bowl of popcorn (as per The Bard's instruction, no less), paused his snacking to angrily glare at the so-called wizard. He was really enjoying the story, even if, like life itself, it had no point.

The sky above, meanwhile grew dark as a mysterious disk eclipsed the sun, a shimmering diamond ring effect making itself visible to all while the very earth upon which they stood began to shake. A great roaring could be heard as rolling cumulonimbus clouds swept in, bringing with them spats of thunder the likes of which they had never seen. Meanwhile, the lupine in the blue shirt was now 8 feet 9 inches and growing, as glowing embers began to pour from his now midnight black eyes. The earthquakes intensified, and the lightning outside became a hailstorming hurricane, easily breaking _every_ window in the entire village of Nottingham, while bolts of lightning danced amidst His fingertips, The Artist now quaking with the very same profoundly unholy fury that had once sunk his teeth into the flesh of gods, and driven entire species beyond oblivion's horizon.

" _ **CURSE YOU YOU INSUFFERABLE WENCH!**_ "

Raymond shoved more popcorn into his mouth. Meanwhile, Gideon's pager went off, prompting him to sneak off into the adjoining room.

" _ **IS THERE NOT EVEN A MICROGRAM OF PATIENCE RATTLING ABOUT IN THAT EMPTY THING YOU CALL A HEAD?! MY WORD!**_ "

Settling down, Agamemon (or more precisely, the Ego of a mighty hunter who had once been called Agamemnon) resumed his story. Gideon, meanwhile, was standing next to his blast furnace, cupping an electronic device to his ear.

"Robin? Robin what is it?"

"..."

"Who?"

...

"They know about what?"

"..."

"Oh-"

Glancing out his window, he glimpsed a burning torch in the distance. Gideon nearly had a heart attack, his legs turning to jello in an instant. If he'd been human, his face would've made Count Dracula himself look like a suntanned chad, and even now he was subconsciously covering...no...he was subconsciously _protecting_ his rectum from what the lynch mob was surely hoping to do to it. Not that any of them were secretly gay, no. They just yearned to shove a big, hard lump of divinely ordained _justice_ right up his butt. No homo.

" _ **SHIT!**_ "

The blacksmith ran back into his secret room, _throwing_ a drawer open as he reached inside, the welded ball bearings that were one of his many dirty secrets bouncing around within the drawer as he did so.

"Now as I was saying, although my first attempt at killing the demigod can only be described as an _abysmal failure_ (I mean, what else would you call it if you were unconscious for 3 days?), I was-"

Gideon Grey ran past, a pistol in hand as he beelined for the backdoor. "RUN!" he screamed.

"Where's he gone off to? Makes me wonder...Now where was I? Oh, right: Fortunately, I able to deploy my backup plan. Specifically, I figured I was likely to fail, so I had enchanted a vial full of ticks with a tracking spell beforehand, and I'd thrown them at the foul gryphon when he wasn't-"

Someone was pounding on the door so hard it almost came off the hinges.

"Gideon Grey, we know what you are!"

Captain McKinnon answered the door.

"Uh, is there a problem?"

"We wish to see the blacksmith!" From nowhere in particular, an answer emerged from the mob.

"What for?"

"He has been accused of _sodomy_."

The captain put on the _I've already got 99 problems at the moment, you're not my superior, and I don't need you making anything worse, so please do so kindly go fuck yourself with the nearest available rusty spoon_ face that all bureaucrats can relate to.

"Yeah," said the captain "and I've been trying to get the hinges for my outhouse door fixed for the last week and a half, so please take a number and _wait your turn_."

The captain slammed the door in their faces and locked it a moment later.

"Guys, we've got a problem."

The lupine who wasn't really a lupine's mask began to crack, a flicker of eldritch rage squirming behind his facade.

Suddenly, the door was forced open with a great _crash_ as a wooden battering ram sent the locking mechanism flying. Father Greg was the first to barge in.

"You _dare_ obstruct our God ordained _justice_? Where are you hiding the sodomite?!"

There might as well have been steam coming out of Agamemon's ears. Hell, you could probably hear the whistle half a mile away on a good day.

* * *

The miracle had come, and it had gone. So too had the audience.

The leaves had grown, the forest reborn, the sapling now a great wooden beast, guarding the hut.

Yet in spite of it all, a fox, the first grey hairs appearing in his pelt at this very moment, continued to linger.

Agamemnon, meanwhile, was indescribably ravenous, and rose like some sort of marionette man, more a possessed husk than a living being.

He looked around, frantic, the grass wilting and dying under his gaze as he did so. The fox, of course, did not escape his attention. The others had gone out to explore a world that was now theirs for the taking, but he stayed behind.

"My word." said he "You've changed."

The Ravenous Hunter, His Ego no longer present to keep him in line, wasted no time in pouncing upon him, clamping his teeth around the thief's neck and shaking his head like some sort of rabid beast. As the light faded to darkness, the fox heard the screams of a rabbit, who had perished in exactly this fashion, one final time.

Whether or not he had it coming, the first murderer in this new world did not even try to resist.

The Hunter, meanwhile, was only further enraged by the unmistakable stench of blood that now filled his nostrils, and it was this Rage that soon found itself tearing into the tree with its bare hands, its once strong trunk crumbling to dust as the pitch black moss of corruption spread. The leaves turned grey and plummeted, as What Was Left of the last human literally tore the tree down, as sparks leapt from his eyes. Excitedly, he dragged over the rest of old Theo's desiccated corpse (much of it having been consumed by the animals) and heaved it atop the oak tree, his tongue lolling from his mouth like a hellhound hot on the scent trail.

And then he noticed something: A little old flat wooden thing, lying on the ground. It was a mask, now wearing a considerable scowl, and as he inspected it, it burst into flames in his hands. Yelping with demonic laughter, The Bottomless Stomach tossed it into the tree, and promptly set the whole thing ablaze, not even hesitating for a second as he leapt into the roaring orange bonfire to feast upon the flesh of a god.

But it was not enough, and it never would be. Soon, the first work of one of the greatest artists ever to walk the multiverse had been consumed, in its entirety, by The Parasite, and thus he left the now scorched oasis for the winter, and besieged himself upon the worlds.

* * *

Shutting the door behind him, he sat down at the desk.

His superior was staring daggers, the cloaked body completely still with barely restrained rage, sighing.

"You wanted to-"

"Nope. Zip it. You've done enough already, and it's my turn now...Honestly, I'm not even sure what to say. Do you have any idea what you've done? Are you even _slightly_ aware of how badly you've fucked things up? Did you really think you'd get away with something like that? Really? Don't tell me you genuinely thought that romping around all willy-nilly and pissing them off like that was a good idea."

"Well-"

A man who was in no way having a Funtime stood up and slapped both of his hands on the table, _hard_. "I SAID ZIP IT, DIPSHIT!"

He paused to regain his composure and sit down. "No, You really _don't_ know, do you? Well let me say this: You, my friend, are in more trouble than that tiny little brain in that thick new goddamn skull of yours could possibly imagine. Honestly, I wish you'd just stayed M.I.A., because now I have a whole _mountain_ of shit to deal with, no thanks to you. I mean, it would literally be easier to kill you, right here, right now. So get out, _buddy_ , because you're fucked. F-U-C-K-E-D, and there's not a damn thing you can say to me that'll fix it."

"Uh-"

"END OF DISCUSSION."

"Sir, with-"

"Are you deaf? I said GET OUT. Don't make me call security, because I am _this close_ to sending your sorry ass to the brig."


	21. Seeing Red, Part 2

Once again, Bellwether was in His museum, standing before an open door as she gazed upon the windy abyss that stood beyond its frame.

Aside from the interrupted lesson, and the comically arbitrary failure it had produced, Dawn Bellwether's day had been unimaginably boring thus far. Agamemnon was busy, and the well oiled machine that was the city of Zootopia more or less ran itself. Hell, even the process by which they appointed someone to replace Bellwether (her death having been faked shortly after her rebirth as a necromancer) was somehow uninteresting to her. All the action was elsewhere, and even her resentment at being shut out of the glorious dumpster fire that was BunnyBurrow had simmered down, yielding to idility, as in, the state of being idle.

An old fashioned red landline rang.

"This is Bellwether."

"...This is Bogo." You could hear the fear draining from his voice. God, he really _was_ a nervous wreck!

"What have you to report?" She sighed, reaching for a clipboard.

"Aside from the usual, nothing." Bellwether ticked a few boxes.

"Now tell me-" she said, peeking at the papers. The Beast had left a few instructions for her. "-about the investigation. Is it done?"

"...Yes." Bogo still didn't like this. To call it corrupt was an understatement, and Bogo, who among other things was afflicted with a non-moderate case of undiagnosed Asperger's syndrome, absolutely loathed this...well, he didn't exactly have a word to describe the sheer dishonesty of this set up. Unlike most of his graduating class at the ZPD academy, he still took the "protect and serve" part of his oath seriously, and there was once a time when he would've killed himself in a heartbeat over breaking that promise.

It certainly didn't help that this is exactly what would happen to him if he failed to break it now. He felt like a Russian spy, an impostor, a monster hiding in a uniform.

"And what of the suspects?"

Bogo, screaming internally at the violations of due process that were as egregious as they were multitudinous, couldn't bring himself to speak.

"Bogo, you there?"

"...Yes."

"And the suspects?"

"..."

" _Bogo?_ "

"Dead. All of them. **_As ordered_**." He spat, hanging up abruptly. Bellwether ticked a box on her form accordingly. Unless he somehow abandoned that pesky _conscience_ of his, Bellwether not only figured he'd be dead within 2 weeks tops, but, by filling out the exam forms, was also helping to ensure his very demise.

That had been an hour ago, and now she was here again, amidst the windy cliffs and ruined doors, standing before the only other gateway in this place that still functioned. Having knocked twice, the zombified sheep stood back, in anticipation. From the other side, the door opened, allowing Bellwether to gaze upon the very basement she had left, only, _different_. Something that would've been a spitting image of herself greeted the apprentice necromancer, only this living corpse continued to sustain itself by biological processes, rather than the black magic that kept this particular incarnation of Dawn Bellwether ticking.

"Can I help you?"

"Yes, um, what even _are_ you?"

"Agamemnon didn't tell you?"

"Honestly, this is all very new to me."

"I can tell."

"No really, this makes _zero_ sense. I mean, I'm pretty sure He's taken over _our_ city. But this, what even _is_ this place?" She said, gesturing to the world between worlds, and the dozens of broken doors.

"You know his kind used to _run_ their prey to death, even when they weren't hunting, _he_ was always a wanderer, always running."

"Really?"

"You're kidding, right? Have you've seen his wall? Where do you think he scored all those kills? That man is _the_ single most well traveled being I have ever known. Here, there, everywhere, he's been there, done that, and he's even got the tee-shirts to prove it. Do you really think he'd stick around your dimension this long unless he _had_ to, unless he was _stuck?_ "

"Then how on _either_ of our two Earths is He also in yours, hmm?"

" _Oh_ aren't you the clever one?" She said. Most rubes (even Raymond, back in the day) didn't acclimate to the multiverse nearly that quickly. "I can see why he took you under his wing."

"Uh, thanks for the flattery, but I still don't get it. Is He just, Idunno, _leapfrogging_ from one planet to the other all the time, or what?"

"Well _duh_ , that's what he does, he's _been_ doing it for years."

"How?"

"It's actually quite simple when you realize that my world is right next to yours. What did you think this place was, a closet? No, this is a hyperspace conduit. A sailor trapped on one island, with some effort, can swim to a nearby sandbar, but that hardly means he can cross the ocean without a ship. Well _this_ is what's left of the ship, the ocean is about 2 clicks below us, you're the sandbar, and my world was the island."

"Uh, why the hell do _you_ get to be the island?"

"Because up 'till this week you were a glorified mook with a penchant for deepthroating big wigs."

Bellwether who was quite taken aback by the sheer audacity of her counterpart, dropped the facade. She was, after all, speaking to her mirror image, which for once could talk back.

"...And you're _not?_ " She asked.

The other Bellwether paused to chuckle.

"Remember that bully asshole back in, what was it? 6th grade?"

"Yeah, he leapt out from behind a corner and cracked 3 of my ribs. What's your point?"

"In my timeline, he aimed for the head. My amygdala has never really worked since that day, and he keeps me around because _none_ of his tricks scare me, and he finds my borderline sociopathy amusing."

"Really?

"Oh yeah. But more than anything, Aga boi gets lonely, you know, _in more ways than one."_

 _"_ Wait, did you just call him-"

" _Fuzzy wuzzy bulgie wulgie Aga boiii?_ Yeah, I did. Y'all are so petrified of him that you go around capitalizing his pronouns like he's _god_ or something. I don't."

"And He _hasn't_ killed you for your insolence?"

"See? _Bwak! Bwak! Bwak! Bwaaaaak!"_ The living Bellwether mimed a chicken, madly flapping its wings.

The zombie Bellwether scowled, not that her lobotomized counterpart cared.

"To answer your question, _no_ , he hasn't. In fact, finds it _hot_."

" _What?_ " To Bellwether, the thought of engaging in anything resembling sex with the rotting thing that she was currently puppeting around as her body hadn't occurred to her until now, and she was now resenting it heavily.

I mean, He's got nothing on Chief Bogo. That's _our_ version of Bogo, by the way, _not_ yours. But then again, even our glorious police chief can't fill _both holes_ at the same time."

"...EW!"

"Really, Aga-boy has an entire _collection_ of the juiciest _cocks_ you've ever seen. He puts them on like _gloves_."

"EW EW EW EW EW EW!"

"But if it's kinky you want, _nothing_ beats that hyena fella' with the mask. That man is a _freak_ in bed."

"SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!"

"Well look, if you're just going to be another moralizing _pansy_ , then please _get lost_ , because I've got a stack of paperwork taller than both of us combined to complete."

"...Maybe I could help you with that?"

"Really, you've got nothing better to do?"

"Nope. 15 hours ago He went off on some errand or whatever and He left me in charge of a city that more or less runs itself, and I'm bored out of my mind."

"Then why don't you come on in, we'll push some papers, and I'll tell you about that time we recreated _lemonparty_."

"NO!" She said, even as she walked into her counterpart's door and shut it behind her, her subconscious mind fully intent on hearing the story in spite of her protests, as many repressed individuals are apt to do. Unbeknownst to either Bellwether, literally everything in the version of Zootopia that the apprentice necromancer had just left behind was well on its way to going to Hell in a handbasket, right at this very moment.

And for once, Jeremy Fischer wasn't responsible for most of it. He wasn't exactly helping, by any means. In fact, he was doing his best to make everything worse, but for once, the majority of the calamity _wasn't_ his doing.

If Agamemnon had ever returned to see the devastation for himself, he almost certainly would've killed Bellwether (again) for this...

* * *

The cruiser came to an abrupt halt in the parking lot of a gas station that wasn't even close to backcountry, yet nevertheless felt quite distant from the city of Zootopia, its sole occupant frantically checking his watch for the time, for the umpteenth time, as he threw the door open and bolted for the entrance to the convenience store, fumbling about for his wallet and checking his watch while he did so. Chief Bogo wasn't exactly a celebrity, but he'd appeared in propaganda broadcasts numerous times, and the clerk, who had been half asleep until now, was quite surprised to see him here, 10 minutes past the city limit.

"What are-"

"I need to borrow your phone." He checked his watch, again, and then looked over his shoulder, his eyes wide open not like a kid who'd seen a ghost, but like a child of abusive parents who'd finally decided to run away, fleeing now from Agamemnon as Raymond the runaway had done all those years ago. In truth, this is exactly what had happened, and even with The Monster gone for the time being, it was only a matter of time before they found him, or so he thought. Not that he wasn't justified in his paranoia, for Agamemnon had a small army of moles at His command who'd infiltrated _every_ branch of society, moles who were not afraid to make His opponents disappear if necessary. Bogo, still somehow a devout man in spite of The Ungodly Horror he had personally witnessed, sent yet another prayer like a senior dev programming a machine, barking a set of metaphysical orders as he hoped that he'd escaped against all odds. And as he was _the_ Chief Bogo, it wouldn't be long before somebody noticed his absence, before somebody put 2 and 2 together, before someone realized what he was trying to do, _to defect_ , before they came for him as they had come for the others, before they came for his children, before he slid down that very chute down which they had gone, into the very same gaping maw of the oven that had once roasted entire countercultures alive, their screams echoing in his ears even now as he desperately ran as fast as he could but The Hairless Sweating Beast Of Old was too fast too stubborn too persistent too tireless he couldn't run anymore he couldn't flee anymore he was tired he collapsed he fell and then He was there to pounce to swallow the very sun from the sky He and His Horrors and His masked men and Their torches and knives and spears and prods and blades and ovens and forks and bonfires and chanting and-

"The phone? Uh, sure? It's back here. You alright, man?" Even now, Agamemnon's curse was in his head, fucking with him.

Bogo held out several 20's, and was in far too much of a hurry to bother with counting them all.

"I was never here. Say _nothing._ "

"Oh! Ok. Hey, do you know what's going on with those broadcasts?" Said the clerk, gesturing to the barenecked fox on his TV. The mammal in question sat behind a grey plastic folding table, with what looked to be a strange model of collar and a small menagerie of tools littering its surface.

The fox in his labcoat, carrying the tone of dry assurance, was speaking:

"-is a myth, but unfortunately there are some... _complications_...that need to be discussed-"

Bogo, who'd already seen the broadcasts, paused, clutching the handset with a metaphorically white-knuckled grip. In fact, they were exactly why he was here. Not this one, which was a PSA concerning the TAME collars. No, the one that had interested Bogo was quite a short broadcast, little more than a minute long, narrated by a gazelle in mirrorshades who sat in a chair in a blank, dark grey soundstage, the chair opposite her empty, beckoning. A telephone number was flashing onscreen. "To whom this may concern, I promise, no matter who you think is on your tail, no matter how fast they are nor how far they may go, we can get there first." As she spoke, an overlay depicting two flat grids joined by a 3rd dimensional tube faded in onscreen. It was a wormhole diagram, and a red dot was spiraling into it. "No matter how much trouble you think you may be in for defecting, I promise, our agents can take you _elsewhere_. You will be free there. You will be safe there. Just dial the number and have your coordinates ready. No questions asked." This, she'd said, and on her promise he was now betting his life.

"Savagery is a myth?" said the clerk, in jest. "Get a load of this _crap_."

"You want my opinion?" Said Bogo. "It's real. All of it. _Every word._ "

The clerk was stunned. for lack of a better word, those announcements contained some rather disturbing information, and the rest of the ZPD were working as hard as they could to make them stop.

"That's impossible!"

Bogo, who, until a week ago, didn't believe in humans, sighed. " **You don't know what that word means.** "

" _Oh God,_ Bogo had prayed _I just don't know anymore._ He'd been an idealistic young man once, back when he'd joined the force. But this real world in all its horrors had seen fit to wear him down, to blur and confuse right and wrong until there was nothing left. Speaking with the human, to him, felt like a stab in the back, like having been tricked into signing Satan's contract, and he'd been desperate for a way out. And then, as if an answer to his prayers, came the voice on the TV. Thus, he was here, ready to throw it all away for a chance at redeeming himself. The water buffalo furiously punched a number into the keypad with his right...let's just call it a _hand_ , shall we?...as he reached for his notepad with his left.

"Hello?" a voice said.

"Honeyitsme."

"Jesus, Bogo, you sound like you've seen a ghost." In truth, he'd seen worse. _Much worse._

"Did you do it?"

"Yes. What's going on?"

" _The coordinates._ "

"-47.15, -126.716667. Sweetie, what's going on? What's with the scary people on the TV?"

"I don't have time to explain now." He said, as he placed the notepad down and switched his phone off of airplane mode. "You and the kids are in terrible danger. Some people will be there soon, _do as they say_. I'll call again as soon as I can."

He jiggled the black plastic prongs, so pressed for time that he couldn't waste it actually hanging the phone up. Not even a second later, he was glancing at an index card he'd hastily shoved in his pocket, dialing yet another number.

 _Ring. Ring. Ri-_

 _ ***Click.***_

 _A very different sort of ring, notably granier than before, as if it were being passed through a hastily installed imprompteu relay system via jumper cables._

"Please state your-" the voice said. It was _not_ the gazelle in the mirrorshades, but it was real all the same.

In spite of the rush, he hesitated to interrupt.

"To who am I speaking?"

"An assimilation manager."

"Suppose I wish to turn myself in."

"You've dialed the correct number, sir. State your name and-"

"Unless you can guarantee the safety of my family, I'm not saying a damn thing."

"Of course, sir. Quite understandable. Give us their coordinates and description and we'll pick them up _now._ "

"negative four-seven point one-fiver. negative one-two-six point seven-one-six-six-six-seven. Water Buffalo, A wife and two kids, aged 5 and 7."

"Coordinates received. Names?"

"Suzanne. The wife."

"Copy that."

Silence. Brutal, hair-pulling, soul-crushing silence. Time was slipping so fast, yet each second felt like an eternity.

Suddenly, a click, his wife now on the line, her voice distorted as it journeyed on a round trip through the multiverse, from the agent's mic to the control tower, and from there to the hastily installed node in this world's telecommunications network and back to Bogo. "What the hell is this?!"

"My Lord!" Bogo rasped, relief plunging his voice by half an octave. "It's you!"

"Don't worry," another voice said "you'll all be-"

 _ ***Click.***_

"Now-" said the manager. "Shall I have yours?"

Bogo looked over his shoulder, again, staring in disbelief as nobody came for him. No cops. No razorbacks. Nada.

"Hey, you still there?"

Bogo stammered. "Oh, s-sorry."

"Your coordinates, sir?"

Bogo hesitated one last time. This was really it, no turning back now. "negative four-seven point two-eight. negative one-two-six point oh-one-nine. Water buffalo, male. Zootopia Precinct One Cheif Bogo."

"...Wow, police cheif...Coordinates recieved. Our representatives will be there shortly."

And then the manager hung up.

Bogo's mind raced. He'd really _done it now._ Now they were coming, now they had his exact location. Now they had his wife, his children. Oh what a fool he'd been, to think he could escape. To trust that gazelle on the TV, to dial into that phone. Now they knew. Now they were coming. They'd be here "shortly". Didn't some rambling old fool who fancied himself a comedian have something to say about words like that? In times like now, they could really be among the most _horrible_ words in the language.

Bogo threw the doors open, running from the convenience store in his panic.

"Woah shit!" said some rando. "Ya' think that's our guy?"

Bogo turned, already reaching for his gun.

"Woa there, hey, no need to get violent here." Someone else said.

A grey fox and a hedgehog stood behind him, only a few feet from the door. The latter was armed, the former operating an edgy black thing that was covered in buttons, toggleswitches, and gauges. Both were dressed in black trenchcoats and grey tee-shirts, the shirts both bearing the inverted gradient triangle that served as their logo.

"Chief Bogo, right?" The fox was wearing a burgundy scarf.

Bogo didn't know what to say. Years of police training told him to arrest them both. Years of experience, however, told him that the cops could be decidedly immoral at times, and meanwhile, his obligation to what was right adamantly refused to be silenced, again. His meeting with Agamemnon told him that the state was rotten to its core, and the Consortium broadcasts had politely informed him that there was a way out.

"You want out or not?" Said the fox, as he wheeled his M-drive drew closer.

"And where's the getaway vehicle?! The cops, the other ones, they're everywhere!"

"Right here." The fox chuckled, gesturing to the machine with left hand. "Shall we adjourn,'cuz I'm ready to go whenever you are, pal."

"You can't be serious."

"Oh, but I am!" Said the fox, gripping Bogo's thigh with one hand as he pressed a big glowing red button marked "RETURN" with his other.

A flash of light.

A loud **_BANG!_** and a buzzing sawtooth screech. All was quiet, if only for a moment.

A cacophony of distant sirens, a revving engine, and the squealing of brakes. Not even 25 seconds later the cops were, as described, _everywhere_ , and bewildered too, for Bogo was nowhere to be seen.

"I don't get it!" Said a Officer Clawseau. "We had a fix on his phone moments ago!"

Suddenly there was a ruckus, as the blade of a pickaxe violently emerged from the pavement. Moments later, a brown creature wearing a yellow hardhat (one of Agamemnon's moles) burst through the asphalt, his eyes bloodshot in fury (also from the dust, which was inevitably produced when one dug covert tunnels like this).

"ALRIGHT YOU SHITHEAD! PUT YER' HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE 'EM!" The creature waved his pickaxe around in a surprisingly menacing way.

Nobody moved. Nobody said anything.

"HUH? WHERE IS HE?"

"Uh, the NSA said he'd be right here."

"HE DAMN WELL BETTER BE HERE OR I SWEAR ON IWATA'S GRAVE I'LL-"

"You know, you don't need to yell all the time." Clawseau, who was standing right next to this guy, had found himself reflexively covering his ears the moment this guy opened his mouth. It was as if he had an air raid siren for a mouth.

" _ **I WILL SPEAK IN ALLCAPS ALL I DAMN WELL PLEASE, SONNY.**_ "

"It's just that I'm standing right next to you, ya' know?"

"YA' KNOW? WHAT DO I KNOW? TELL ME PLEASE, WHAT IN THE NAME OF THE BASTARD CHILD OF THE MAYOR AND ISABELLE DO I FUCKING KNOW?!"

An officer emerged from the store.

"Sorry fellas. He ain't here."

"WELL AIN'T THAT JUST _**FAN-TUCKING-FASTIC!**_ I WAS MINDING MY OWN BUSINESS, EATING SOME LUNCH, WHEN THAT DAMN ALARM GOES OFF, AND NOW I'VE DUG ALL THE WAY HERE, ONLY TO BE TOLD THAT THE PERP IS GONE! _AM I A JOKE TO YOU PEOPLE!_ HUH?! IS THAT IT? IS MY ONLY PURPOSE HERE TO PROVIDE AMUSEMENT TO YOU SICK BASTARDS BEHIND THE SCREEN? **_IS THAT IT?!_** _"_

"Um, what?" Said Clawseau, as one of Agamemnon's many [literal] moles climbed back into his hole, still talking to himself as he crawled away:

"GOD-DAMN _RESETTIN'_ PIECE OF SHIT! WHY'D THE MAYOR EVEN BOTHER WITH THIS CRAP IF I NEVER GET TO CHEW THOSE ASSHATS OUT? BASTARD MUST THINK I'M A JOKE. _GOD_ I AM GOING TO SHIT A BRICK AND A HALF WHEN I GET BACK TO THE STATION. YEAH, A SHIT AND A WANK, THAT'S WHAT I FUCKIN NEED."

"Uh, hey!" Said Clawseau, who'd stooped down to shout into the hole. "We can still hear you."

An enraged "NGAAAAA!" could be heard as Mr. Resetti re-emerged from his hole, violently smashing Clawseau's skull in with his pickaxe as an aneurysm finally burst in his head. He'd spend the next 20 seconds brutally murdering everyone he could find, crushing them to death beneath the might of a pickaxe swung like the golden hammer from _Smash Bros_ (complete with the _Wrecking Crew_ music), before he himself collapsed from exhaustion and died from a combination of cardiac arrest, internal bleeding, liver failure, and mesothelioma. Quite a shame, really, he _was_ entitled to financial compensation for that last one.

* * *

V-[REDACTED], somewhen in the year [DATA EXPUNGED]

Somewhere deep within the bowels of Site 19, a handful of the most powerful beings in the multiverse were busy making smalltalk. Hell, even MULTIVAC was here, to the extent that it was possible for a stadium sized 60 year old supercomputer to _be_ in any one place, at any rate. Seated next to MULTIVAC's terminal was an android body being puppeted by a man who had technically been dead for decades, the two in conversation with a little old lady on the subject of the latter's new watering can. Elsewhere at the comically long table, an old man with a prominent beard and another not-so-old man with a tweed suit and a hat were both taking their seats. They were discussing budgets, as were a shapeshifting eldritch being who was currently pretending to be a Panda, and one of Nicholas Randall Puxatony Derek "Funtime" Wilde's puppet corpses ("Corpse" being synonymous with "body" here).

"Funtime, you can't possibly be serious."

"Why not?" He sounded indignant, almost defensive.

"Give me one good reason why I should vote for your ridiculous proposal."

"For starters, 1543-J's left bearing is squealing badly, and I find its current state of disrepair alarming."

"Yeah, so do half of Site 19's bathroom stall doors. What's your point?"

"You never know when you might need to launch something into the-"

The pseudo hivemind was interrupted by SCP-343, who suddenly appeared within the conference room. "As an omniscient being who is and has been forced to listen to every last one of the 329 squealing bathroom hinges located within this facility alone, I can assure you, the sound _is_ quite unpleasant."

Funtime sighed as he pressed the button summoning MTF-1, the resulting klaxon disturbing many thousands of personnel, including a scientist who happened be to loading a sample of the green fluid contained within scp-2383-j into a centrifuge. He fumbled the test tube, spilling the now red fluid all over himself. This incident would prove fatal several hours later, when the researcher in question spontaneously exploded whilst masturbating in a foundation lavatory. _Holy shit, am I dying?_ he might have though in the moments before the researcher detonated, but in truth, he really couldn't tell if he was _coming_ or _going_.

Obligatory reference aside, Funtime was furious at SCP-343 for interrupting the meeting:

"What the _hell_ 343? Did you _really_ have to barge in here like that?"

"You were going to lose the argument without my input."

"And you thought your unsubstantiated opinion on the sonic aesthetics of bathroom doors would help me?"

"I work in mysterious ways."

"Oh go fuck yourself!" Said the now thoroughly pissed Hivemind reynard, who at this very moment was dropping this body's pants in accords with MTF cleanup procedure 09-Ra, grunting in bureaucratic discomfort as the [DATA EXPUNGED] was very deliberately inserted into his [REDACTED]. Of course, he and the other O5's had convened here for a reason, and whether or not they were all having thaumiel-class anomalies shoved up their orifices, they still had work to do and a budget to finalize.

"Now to answer your question-" Funtime said, turning back to the now rather disgruntled mammal on the decontamination gurney "-my point is that the strategic role of 1543-J will be compromised if-" Funtime paused, uttering a shocked "Gah!" as one of the MTF people inserted the probe into his rectal cavity in order to test for the invisible KETER class SCP's that sometimes appeared there whenever SCP-343 teleported like this. "-if the bearing fails."

"Well if you ask me, that thing is a waste of money, especially considering- **NGHAA!** "

The other O5 grunted in shock as the endoscope was inserted.

"For fuck's sake, you're supposed to _pre-heat_ the damn thing first!" He shouted. "Screw up like that again and I'll have you sorry ass _terminated!_ " Turning back to Funtime, the now thoroughly disgruntled O5 resumed his conversation.

"-As I was saying, that thing is a waste of money that doesn't even _work_ half of the time. Believe it or not, launching 682 into the sun _doesn't_ kill it, and I for one, was removing its feathers from my eye sockets for _days_ after that last test."

"Worth it." Funtime quipped.

"NO IT WAS-" The endoscope was removed with an abrupt _YANK!_ , once again in violation of MTF cleanup procedure 09-Ra.

" ** _O_ _K, THAT'S IT!_** " He said, reaching for his gun...moments later, he'd pulled the trigger, the BFG pocket edition (but was it _really_ a BFG if it could fit in your pocket?) releasing a glowing spherical projectile that enshrouded the poor fucker in a puke-green plasmatic veil that peacefully rested atop his skin for exactly one shake of Dusk Bellwether's tail before it ripped his corpse to shreds, sending gibs flying all over the room.

Blood was now _everywhere_ , the scarlet fluid drooling down the walls and dripping from the table's edge.

* * *

Sometime in the year 1897, somewhen in the dead of winter.

The eldritch bird from chapter 19 was perched atop a rock. The rock would later describe this predicament as "profoundly unpleasant", but at the moment, it said nothing. Suddenly, the bird was quite rudely perturbed as a watermelon appeared in the air, miraculously and without warning, 2 meters above it. The unwitting watermelon, doing as watermelons tend to do whenever a watermelon appears in such a spontaneous fashion, fell, hitting the bird with a hard _thunk!_ and settling nearby on the petrified souls of the damned atop which the rock itself had been placed, the damned souls themselves having been turned to grass.

 _ **By who?**_ (lol subtle eldritch horror amirite)

Needless to say, the watermelon's rolling, and the subsequent landing of the bird (a raven), surely caused the grass incalculable pain (Not that anyone else cared.). The raven's beak unhinged like a snake, as a xenomorph-esque second mouth emerged from its maw, its yellow needleteeth sinking into the rind of the watermelon as the reddish juice emerged from its magenta flesh.

Then, as quickly as it came, the watermelon vanished without a trace. Unfazed, the raven continued to consumptionate the part of the melon that it had already bitten off, before returning to its perch atop the rock.

* * *

Robin, who had just walked his wife, the much esteemed Maid Marian, back to their home, was now sprinting through the woods as fast as his 60 year old legs could carry him. As the _other_ consortium informant in the town of Nottingham, he and Gideon had been paid to, among other things, keep an eye out for exactly this sort of thing. And what a thing it had been: A literal showstopping demon rabbit.

 _Shit! Shit! SHIT!_ ** _SHIT!_**

The image of her rage, scarlet blood and iridescent flame pouring from her eyes, was still burned into his skull, and for the first time in a very long time, he felt genuinely terrified in these woods that he could no longer _completely_ trust. Who had possessed the rabbit to do such a thing? Were there others? _Was it here, behind a tree?_ Judging by the clothes, she _had_ to have been an offworlder, and many agents had not only gotten involved, but had blown their cover while doing so! Whatever it was, it was a big fucking deal.

And so he ran for Gideon's forge.

To his horror, it seemed he was not the only one. Drawing closer, Robin became aware that there were others in the woods. Many others, in fact, for Father Greg and a very angry looking mob were marching down the path ahead, beelining for Gideon's forge.

 _Father Greg and an angry mob?_

Up until now, There had been exactly one man in the town who knew of the blacksmith's secret. Not his continued participation in an obscure form of body modification, no, the _other_ secret.

 _SHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT_

Grinding to a halt, he dashed behind the nearest tree, praying that he hadn't been spotted. His walkie talkie was out in an instant, and he hoped to god, God, (that is to say, the generic god, _and_ the brand name Biggie-G of the O.G. O.T.) or even Satan that his warning would make it in time...

 _Come on, answer it!_

 ** _*Click.*_**

The blacksmith's voice greeted him from the speaker.

"Gideon, the mob's coming!" He said, panic staining his voice.

"..."

"It's that damned priest. I don't know how, _but he knows_. You have got to get out of there, now!"

"..."

"About your...you know!"

The greymuzzled reynard was running out of breath, but he pressed on through the shadows that had enveloped these woods, hoping against all hope that he'd catch up before they got to the door. Anything to slow the mob down.

He heard a very, very loud _bang_ , and rounded the corner seconds later, fearing the worst.

To his astonishment, the blacksmith's forge was surrounded by what appeared to be statues, and a little boy, his torch still burning, ran past Robin, back into the woods. His screams were muffled by his head, which had already been turned to stone. His hips followed suit, his legs solidifying in an instant as he toppled with a heavy _thud_ , the boy's agony frozen on his granite face, which was currently pressed into the dirt.

Robin, whose mind had temporarily ignored this sight simply because of how strange it was, had turned back towards Gideon's forge, only to discover that the entire lynch mob had met a similar fate, the very same look of pure terror adorning the statues that clustered 'round the now shattered door of the forge. Standing among them was a wolf, his arms crossed and his eyes glowing like a pair of sunsets as he scowled at the 'statues'.

"Maybe I'll unfreeze them." He sighed, the fire in his eyes subsiding.

" _Maybe._ "

Gideon's front door, which had evidently been torn to pieces by a battering ram, suddenly reassembled itself and leapt back up into the doorframe. Having stepped back inside, the human in wolf's clothing promptly shut the door.

* * *

Once the forest leaves were red.

But as they turned, so they fell.

Now the forests below looked dead.

And dead the trees would remain-

'till summer came 'round again.

Necromancers, all of them!

Truly dead, they never are.

The trees have eyes, everywhere!

Through them She always watches.

Not that there were many here.

Trees, I mean. Few this far up.

This _is_ a mountain, you know.

Neither trees nor people here.

As far as the eye can see.

As for those wretched humans:

Their slaughter had yet to come.

Not that it wasn't coming.

Their extermination. _Soon._

"Another vague word is _'soon'_."

As George Carlin used to say.

What an emotional word!:

Great potential for sadness:

Longing, boxed up and packaged:

Staining the so-called "white lie":

"When's daddy coming back?" " _Soon._ "

So George Carlin used to say.

"Soon", in all its many forms,

"Soon", such a wonderful word.

The end of humanity?:

 _Much Sooner than you would think._

No escape from death for them.

(No matter who they might be.)

There are two types of stories:

Those that end in death for all,

And those tales of death, abridged.

And thus the end of people:

 _Sooner than you think indeed._

No escape, except, for Him.

And just what was He doing?

Agamemnon, the hunter:

Clinging to the mountain's side.

Rarified air, much too thin.

Stay too long and he would die.

So the hunter climbed onwards.

And just what, up here, drew Him?:

It _was_ one hell of a bird:

 _The_ _θiˈɑfɪlʌs ˈθɪsəl_ :

The sifter of thistles who

did sift three thousand thistles

right through the thick of his thumb!

And so he screamed then, like now,

as 'neath his tail it opened:

A portal to hell itself!

Thus, his wretched shit did spill,

through the hellhole in his ass.

This hell in which man would go.

Not literally, of course.

(OwO pls vore me daddy)

As for the many humans:

A failed experiment, damned.

All the bloody lot of 'em.

No mercy, except, for Him.

He who stood downwind and gagged.

He who stood with knife in hand,

his other pinching his nose.

Most _creative_ of humans,

For this, He alone survived:

Agamemnon, god-killer.

And what of the deity?

Distracted, the gryphon was,

as he purged the filth within.

And so the hunter closed in.

At this moment, she appeared,

and the mountain glimpsed her there:

Newborn, rosy-fingered Dawn.

While elsewhere, upon a cube,

before a bewildered fox,

the first of them to be named,

an incandescent seam spread.

Agamemnon, having climbed,

atop the mountain He stood.

Gripping the hilt of His blade,

machete held tight, He leapt.

For all starts are also stops,

and each end, a beginning.

For Man to rise, God must die.

Just like the humans below.

Damned, every last one of them.

So too did the hunter leap.

And on that great rocky peak,

atop the highest mountain,

cold steel cleaved a spine in two.

A beginning, and an end.

Red blood seeing red dawn's light.

* * *

Spurred to action in a single moment, embarking upon a quest on a whim, Fall had come and Fall had gone, and the solstace had passed the day before his return. Yet his easel and artbox were there all the same, his canvases undisturbed in his hut.

"Why do you sit out there, fiddling with that ink?" They said.

But they did not know, no, they did not hear the calling to ascend. For although he'd killed a god on a whim, this had hardly been the first time such a thought had crossed his mind. And now that the corpse was back in his studio, Agamemnon knew just what to do. For still beating within The Deathless One's corpse was the seat of a power far greater than any he had yet to lay eyes upon.

"There is a god" he said, "and he sits here before his canvas, working away with every tool in his box."

And now he was ready to take a step (although it was merely a step) towards making that statement literal.

Clutching the hilt of his machete in both hands, he was on his knees now, blade held high over his head as he gazed once more upon the exposed chest of old Theo the Asshole. Bringing his arms down in unison, the blade slipped between the scales and plunged through the demigod's chest with a sound like that of a locomotive wheel squealing momentarily as the flange contacts the rail during a turn, as blood so red it was practically black oozed out, as if it were a river.

The body writhed. Theo, you see, was a deathless god, and such, he couldn't _truly_ be killed. But, much like f(x)=(1/x), or any function such that lim(x→∞) f(x) = 0, you could get as arbitrarily close to 0 (that is to say, killing him) as you wanted.

You could sever the spine, paralyzing the corpse.

You could drag it all the way back to your studio, rip open the chest, and extract the still beating heart.

You could behead the bastard and leave him face-down in a pile of turds.

Agamemnon had done, or was currently doing, all three of these things. Truly he was a walking contradiction, a steadfast, stubborn statue of a man who was undaunted by even the mightiest hurricane, as all godslayers were. Yet he was also capricious, his will drifting on a whim like a leaf in a gentle breeze, and thus he was petty to such an extent that, like any self respecting primate, he had literally smeared The gryphon's face with his own feces, before placing it on top of and then shoving it deep into a pile of fresh, hot, _steaming_ shit he'd found in a nearby pigpen.

Having finished _that_ disgusting catharsis, he'd cleaned himself thoroughly, only to render himself filthy again in an instant as he reached into the demigod's chest cavity. With a great _heave_ and a grunt, the bloodsoaked biped lifted the heart of the once magnificent θiˈɑfɪlʌs ˈθɪsəl ðə səkˈsɛsfəl ˈθɪsəl ˈsɪftər (or, to mortals: Theophilius Thistle The Successful Thistle Sifter) up to chest level, and placed it atop a trapezoidal granite altar. He then briefly stepped into his hut, and emerged moments later, carrying a strange looking device that was shaped like the roundified endcap of a PVC pipe, only it was some sort of greyish matte metal, and it had several cylindrical things and a nixie tube coming out of the curved part, alongside a circular pressure gauge with a label plastered on it that read: "Über". The other side, meanwhile, was flat, and merely had three identical electrode-spikes sticking out of it.

"Now-" he said, as he violently stabbed the heart with the machine. "-most hearts could not vithstand zis voltage." He fumbled about for a bit and grabbed an alligator clip that was as large as it was thick, the clip itself functioning as the end of a jumper cable that was connected to a car battery full of every sort of ungodly [DATA EXPUNGED] imaginable.

Agamemnon fastened the alligator clips around one of the many metal cylinders that protruded from the machine.

"But I'm fairly certain this one-"

The heart of Theophilus Thistle promptly exploded.

 _Some of it had even gotten into his mouth._

Agamemnon, of course, had made bigger mistakes, and he was pretty sure he could fix this one. Still, piecing together the exploded the heart of a demigod wasn't going to easy, quick, or fun.

Sometime later, he was seated in front of a new canvas on a new easel, once again painting, just as he had been before he'd embarked on his epic quest to kill a god. Suddenly, a shift of ginger caught his eye. It was that fox!

"Well well well, long time no see." Said the human, with a hint of apprehension. "What brings you here this time, Mr. Red?" Putting his palette down, he turned to get a better look at the sneaky motherfucker who'd stolen his paint, noting almost immediately that something was different about him.

He'd seen it several times during his journey, the animals. He'd lived through some wierd shit already, but in the back of his mind he registered that they were beginning to change. It wasn't, or rather, _hadn't_ been anything conscious, anything at all that he could name, but somehow (maybe it was the look in their eyes) he knew something was changing. And now that he no longer had a demigod to kill, he turned the full attention of his mind to it.

The fox slowly sulked away, staring at the ground as it did so. Agamemnon, his mind still in a slump from the destruction of his previous work, was loathe to begin anew so soon, and abandoned his painting, following the orange canine. As he did so, he became all too aware of the sorry state of this fox: Fluffy as his fur was, even Agamemnon could see that it was little more than a walking skeleton now, skin clinging to starving bones. As he followed, deeper into the woods, his attention was practically stolen by a set of six grey squares, haphazardly strewn across the ground as if they were part of a floating box that had since exploded. Agamemnon stopped to examine them, finding that they were each lighter than a feather, and utterly thin, more like a 2-dimensional razor sharp sliver of graphene than an object that one would usually find in a forest. Yet they were impossibly strong, for as hard as he tried, he couldn't even so much as _bend_ the squares, let alone break any one of them.

Having been reminded of why he'd come here by a gust of wind past his ear, he searched for the fox, dismayed by the fact that he had seemed to disappear. The great hunter sighed, having let this one get away, only to notice that the wood had fallen completely silent.

Silent except, perhaps, for a whimper. Agamemnon followed it, past uprooted trees and across creeks that seemed almost frozen, as the color faded from the world in a display of mourning. the human followed a trail 'round a bend and came upon a clearing in which the fox stood, chocking back tears and a gag at the same time. By now, the world was entirely grey, with the exception of the rivulets of deep crimson lifeblood that oozed from the mauled corpse of a rabbit, its head twisted at an impossible angle.

The fox stared at the corpse, unwilling to leave, yet unable to bring himself closer, as a painful new dissonance crossed his mind for the very first time. Seated on his haunches, he stared at his paws, not only as a murderer gazes upon their weapon, but as a child who has finally become irreversibly aware of their own inescapable demise. Just as there had been no mercy for this rabbit, so too would there be none whatsoever left for him, her dying screams still ringing in his ears as he collapsed in grief.

Something, a branch maybe, crackled behind him. Agamemnon spun to see what it was. The last thing he saw was a contorted vision of rage, and beneath that, regret, yet beneath it all, a lone spark of hope. The last thing he heard was a truly guttural roar-scream, like nothing he had ever heard before or since.

He woke up in his hut, startled, not quite feeling himself. Opening the door, he was quite alarmed to discover that he had an audience, chief among them a oak sapling, roughly 2 years old, that he would've sworn hadn't been there the day before. Sure, Agamemnon was no stranger to mind altering substances, and yeah, he'd need at least 2 hands to count the times he'd gotten higher than a kite, but even if he were stoned as all hell, he was pretty sure he would've noticed a tree growing not even 30 feet in front of his front door.

And up until now, he hadn't. Yet it was here all the same, amidst a small army of every sort of mammal known to this man.

Hanging from one of its branches was a mask, staring right at him. Their faces were sullen now, lines of worry crisscrossing many of them. Theirs were the eyes of a soldier returning from war, of a once innocent boy who had witnessed the rage of Her balrogs firsthand, of a poor soul who had marched into the pits of hell itself, only to leave a part of himself there. Standing in front of them all was a fox, the very first _murderer_ of his kind, who had placed a tube of crimson paint at his feet.

"Why?"

* * *

Spring, 1985. Somewhere in V-293.

"Let's. all. _walk_. to. the. lobby. to. get. ourselves. a. Snack."

No running, of course. That was forbidden. In a way, many societies can be said to be defined by what they fear. Some fear "them". Some fear "bombs". Some fear "allah". Even The Consortium was quite literally defined by its fear of V-027 "N".

This world, meanwhile, going all the way back to prehistory, had been made to fear "savages".

The earliest cave paintings, which were superseded by folklore and mythologies of military conquest, told of land wars that were as bitter as they were brutal. Guided onwards by a lust for power and The Fear Of Death, great empires rose and fell, all while hatred ate away at their brains like fleas of the mind. The great explorers of old had gone out, directed by A Hollow Man to search for a keyhole, and they came back, not with treasure or tall tales, but in tears, seething with rage at what they had found.

"Cannibals! Savages! That land is crawling with them! Nothing good could ever come from there. Some of them do not even fear our gods!"

" _How dare they?_ "

It is hardly a surprise that both the gods and The Stomach ordered them to venture out once again, this time with reinforcements.

 _Many_ reinforcements.

By a chain of events that could each be considered a small miracle, this world began to approach a state that resembled modernity, much like how _Birdemic: Shock and Terror_ vaguely resembles a good movie, despite being nothing of the sort. This is to say that aside from flashier tech and a minor cosmetic upgrade, it was the same old barbarism, hatred, and fear, all over again.

Yet as history advanced, an irony that was as cruel as it was peculiar began to emerge, for the very same predators that had once been slaughtered, marginalized, decimated, defeated, or otherwise enslaved were now suddenly feared as if they were ticking time bombs: Barely repressed balls of unstoppable bloodlust that had to be suppressed (by force if necessary), lest they annihilate civilization itself. And to this end the TAME collars were just the beginning, for this very same fear had trickled through and permeated every branch of society: Nowhere on their television networks could you find anything funnier than _Leave it to Beaver_ , especially since an onscreen amber collar earned a film a PG-13 rating, and was prohibited outright from broadcast television. Never mind Carlin's dirty words, there were entire categories of facial expressions that were blacklisted from the air, the very heart of drama itself systematically plucked apart, slowed down, softened, edited, lobotomized, circumcised, pacified, or otherwise diluted to the point of erasure! Newspaper editors were trained to watch for "excessive" adjectives, and schoolchildren were thrown in detention if they dared to use more than 1 exclamation point in a piece of written work!

And don't even get me started on what they did to music! Even the classic "let's all go the lobby!" wasn't tame enough for these brain-dead robots. "Treat", of course, was far too visceral, too invocative of hunger, consumption, and satisfaction, the trifecta of savage predation. And so what little food they did feed to pred kids at school was always the same kibble: Never enough of it to truly fill a stomach, and never any good on the tongue. And of course, they had to remind people to _walk_ to the lobby, because running was "uncivilized", and if we dared to let little pred kids run, why, why they'd start chasing, and hunting, and _eating_ people! And to top it all of, they not only ran the music through multiple filters to reduce its dynamic range, but played it at 80% speed, because anything too fast, too loud, or too "aggravating" was banned.

Never mind EDM, Dubstep, Hip Hop, Grunge, Nu-Metal, or even that good old kind of Rock'n'Roll: if it in any way soothed the soul, raised the roof, or was otherwise more emotionally titillating than the _Thomas The Tank Engine_ theme, it was too much for these _pansies!_

And now imagine that you were a teenaged fox trying to take your girlfriend out on a date. For one thing, she was little more than a literal girl friend, and the movie you'd taken her to see was as childish and pandering as the crap they'd showed you in preschool.

"...excessive passion should so be treated that these scenes do not stimulate the lower and baser element." So said the code.

"That makes me feel angry." Thus said the on-screen badger, his monotone voice as steady as the green light on his collar, not even betraying a hint of emotion. Correct standards of life indeed.

The audience gasped, and an indignant moral guardian type was quite literally leaving the theater over this scandalous display, the product of a viscous cycle a half-century in the making. Predators had to feign emotionlessness just to get by, causing everyone else to assume they were really murderous sociopaths who were good at hiding their true motives. These lemmings would then march off to their nearest elected representative and demand that they increase collar sensitivity, starting the whole process over again. Indeed, like all of The Beast's well ordered systems, it iterated, like clockwork, every 13 months, as it had since the TAME collar had first been introduced in 1937.

Johnathan Wilde, then 16 years old, dared to hold his girlfriend's hand. Somebody else noticed, and they had been forced to leave the theater that very minute, passing by a canine with an inch-thick stack of papers as they did so. The wolf in question was attempting to purchase a ticket to an R-rated movie, and, as per the law, he had produced the results of a thorough psychological screening which he had completed 2 months prior.

"Close call-" said the teller "-your testing expires next week."

So they had been kicked out of the theater. Now Johnathan Wilde was here, checking over his shoulder one last time, just to be sure. Hearing a distant police siren, he ducked through the door and gently shut it behind him as he did so. He motioned with his flashlight, leading his date deeper within the abandoned happytown storefront.

His grandfather had stumbled off the boat right into the arms of a high school sweetheart, having just got back from the war in '41. Back in those days, only ex-cons had to wear collars, and it was therefore possible for a seaman fresh out of the navy to pursue something resembling romance. 29 years later, Johnathan's father, a good for nothing Uncle Tom if ever there was one (who also just so happened to be named "Thomas"), had more or less repeated history.

But times had changed, and now Jonathan Wilde was standing amidst the dust choked mothballs of a store his family had once owned, as he contemplated whether or not to swallow a pill that had cost him _two_ whole paychecks.

Not that he hadn't tried it without, but after 40 minutes of sexual stalemate, his limp dick hanging in defeat, she'd finally called it off. So long as they were stuck in these collars, anything vigorous enough to actually maintain an erection would also get you shocked.

And so they'd saved, and planned. Sure, the movie hadn't worked out, but that just left more time for the very lethargic _fucking_ they were about to attempt. And according to rumor, he'd need every second he could get.

"There's always the doc and his funnel, if it's kids ya' want." the dealer had said.

"Butchya' don' want that, dooya'? Nah, iss' _consummation_ ya' looking for. Yeah, I been there, dun that. Why 'ell I even bought m'self da tee-shirt. An' I ain't gonna' lie to ya' John, we're fucked, you an' me both, man. _Fucked._ Those bastards ain't cut yer' balls off, but 'dey might as well have, 'cuz them fukkin' collars... Iss' a waitin' game, you hear me? It ain't easy, an' it sure as hell ain't _quick_ , but if you jus' keep goin', it _does_ come. Butchya' already figured that bit out, didn't'cha? An' try as you might you jus' can't keep it going that slow fo' that long, can you? Ay, no shame, we all been there. An' tha's what _this_ right here is for."

 _If this doesn't work, Jeremy, I swear to fucking god..._ John's collar went amber.

"Oh yeh, iss' real, hundred per-cent."

"Well?" She said, dragging his recollections back to the present. "Are we doing this or not?"

She had a point. Even now, he was unsure. On one hand, he couldn't say no, yet the risk was so great. Consequences in mind, he reached his hand down, although whether he was undoing his fly or subconsciously covering his crotch was anyone's guess.

If he loved her, he wouldn't risk it all. Not like this. Yet if he really loved her, he would all the same, stopping at nothing to bring the tiniest bit of please to her in this hellhole.

"John?"

Gazing upon the little blue pill one last time, he abruptly shoved it into his mouth and forced himself to swallow, much like he hoped it would force his flesh to rise.

"Well then."

They gazed into each other's eyes for what seemed an eternity, slowly drawing closer, the light of a passing police cruiser spilling in beneath the door and illuminating the lovers in a red that was as dull and subdued as it was brilliant to their nocturnal eyes. In the not too distant future, he'd look back on this moment as the happiest of his life. Years later, the resulting accident missing and the lovers sterilized, this assessment would not change, nor was it likely to.

As for the accident, Nicholas Raymond Wilde was elsewhere now, and he had far bigger worries.

* * *

The little fox couldn't help but gawk. This was his first day here, and he'd never seen a bathroom this posh. The marbled countertops, blackberry scented foaming hand soap, polished brass faucets, heated floors, soft shower curtains, and shelves of pulp novellas stood in a stark contrast to the cold, hard, grey concrete box where he'd done most of his 'business' until now.

Speaking of which, Nick was here for a reason, and as much as he would've otherwise investigated every minute detail in the room, his bowels had other ideas. He was, however, utterly unprepared for what greeted him as he lifted the toilet lid with his bandaged fingers.

A not at all faint "What the heck is this?" made itself heard to Mr. Piberius.

The older fox found his protégé, a boy coming up upon childhood's end, simultaneously innocent and jaded at the same time, staring into the toilet bowl, and chuckled.

"I'll admit, it's not as impressive as it seems. The first space elevator was built in the early 80s, you see. Come to think of it, that was probably right around the time you were born, actually. Anyway, once the metals started coming in from the asteroid mines, I had my toilet bowl gilded."

It was at this time that Nick noticed something in the bowl. Mr. Piberius hadn't stopped at merely gold plating it, no. "Who's that?" He said, pointing to a small, metal portrait roughly halfway down the bowl, on the side closer to the cistern. The water level in the toilet came just short of its forehead, as if the man were drowning. It was a coin, heated up a bit and welded to the toilet.

"Why that there used to be an authentic Spanish doubloon, minted in the early 18th century."

"No way!"

"Oh yes it is! Really, some divers in the 70's found a pirate's chest in a shipwreck full of the things, and then some idiot blew their life savings on that gold. Not even a decade later, its price had literally been decimated and then some, and I bought it off the guy for less than I would've paid for _copper_."

Nick was speechless, his jaw hanging open in awe. He had never seen this much gold in his life. And yet it was somehow _cheap?_ It wasn't possible! _None_ of it was! Yet it was real all the same, whether he believed it or not.

"I mean, it's not _worthless_ , but now the value of gold is now much more in line with its industrial applications and inherent chemical properties, rather than the entirely contrived scarcity that used to plague our economy."

"OK" said the little fox, who didn't really understand the economic effects of the space elevator. "But why?"

Mr. Piberius took a deep breath.

"Here's the thing about life, Nick: you see that shiny yellow shit in the toilet bowl? People fought and _died_ for that gold, and I defecate on it whenever it strikes my fancy!"

"Def, defe-" Nick had never heard the word before.

"It's a fancy way of saying 'poop'."

" _Defecate_ " the kid chuckled, as most 12 year olds did at this sort of thing.

"Well yeah, and on that coin is the face of a _king_ , you know. Old Phillip the 5th of Spain was once the most powerful man on earth, and now I _poop_ all over his face every morning after my coffee."

Nick was laughing even harder now, but he was beginning to settle down.

"Well that's time for you, kid, it don't take no for an answer. Governments collapse, empires fall, gods die, it's all the same. If any of it were real, maybe it'd stick around, but it never does. You asked about that 'big picture' thing they keep talking about, well there it is, right in the shitter: Here now, gone tomorrow. King of yesteryear, adorning a man's toilet today. The big picture doesn't care. The big picture _never_ cared. It doesn't owe you any favors, and it ain't out to get you. It just _is_ , and so are we, for a little while."

"So we're all going to be in toilets one day?"

"No, it's more than that. This guy, Phillip, he was a _king_ , and look how far he's fallen now. In my experience, when you really look at it, I've yet to find a "purpose" to life that isn't every bit as shallow and petty and narcissistic as gold plating my toilet, because that's all it is, it's people projecting their narrow fictions onto a wider world, hoping against hope that they're anything but the clever, evolved animals that they are. They think that conquering the world, hoarding all the money, or building the biggest pyramid will exempt them from death, from eternity. _Well it fucking doesn't._ Nick, I put that there as a reminder to have some perspective, lest I start thinking too highly of myself." As he concluded his spiel. Mr. Piberius noted that the boy was doing the potty dance.

"Pee all over him if that's what you want to do. Just leave your mess in the bowl, and be sure to wash your hands afterwards. Anyway, I'll leave you to it." he said, leaving the room.

* * *

See? I told you it'd come together. A pirate died so that, 19 _thousand_ words later, an author-insert can make a point.

Thanks for reading, reviews would be appreciated.

 _See you next time!_


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